ONE YEAR AGO TO-DAY ON NOV. 2nd, 2007

I'm a little short on blogging ideas at the moment but here's where we were & what was happening to us one year ago to-day on Nov. 2, 2007.

FRIDAY NOV. 2/07....LIMON, COLORADO
It was about 3 a.m. Friday morning when the first stirrings of pain in my lower abdomen woke me. It radiated from my lower back around my right side to the front. I had a similar pain a few days back but it wasn't as bad as this & only lasted about an hour & it was gone so figured it was something I ate & would go away shortly, but, it didn't go away. It got worse!! About 8 a.m. the pain was too much to take anymore so Kelly got on the computer & looked up the nearest hospital. Fortunately there was one nearby in the little town of Hugo about 15 miles southwest of Limon. I was able to un-hook the car, (did I mention the high winds & totally freezing temperatures) climbed inside, & Kelly drove me quickly to the hospital. The pain by now was extreme & I figured it was my appendix for sure....it wasn't. Also thought more about food poisoning....but nope, it wasn't that either. My Dad died of a large abdominal cancerous tumor in his late 60's so I had that on my mind as well as we rolled up to the emergency room. I was quite a looking sight as I hobbled, doubled over, into the emergency entrance. Hair all over the place, old clothes, jacket hanging over my shoulders & looking like I had just crawled out of a dumpster. I was well aware of how gruesome I looked so the first words out of my mouth to the attendant was, "no, I'm not a drunk & I am not on drugs!!" They had me on the table right away. No forms to fill out, no silly questions & no delays. What a relief it was when they put the IV in (ouch!!) & got some morphine started. Wasn't long & the pain was gone & I floated off briefly to some nice green valley far away. A complete blood work-up later showed elevated white blood cell counts. Blood in the urine as well. The Doctor (nice fellow) was stumped though at the total absence of pain all of a sudden even after the morphine wore off. The only thing they could figure was that I had a kidney stone & it had passed at the hospital. I sure hope so because I wouldn't want to have to go through that pain again. The Doctor prescribed some meds & we headed back to the motorhome around noon. The rest of the day I spent resting. We'll see how things are in the morning & then make a decision whether to head off for Denver & the Rocky mountains or wait for a bit. (we headed west first thing next morning & I've been fine ever since)

Too complicate all this, I had discovered Thursday afternoon that I had a tick imbedded in my left leg behind my knee. Figure I picked it up back in Benton Harbor, Michigan a few days before. Leg had been really sore in that area for a couple of days & Thursday while rubbing the back of my leg I felt something & we spotted the tick. He was alive because I saw his legs wiggling. He had his jaws into me pretty good because I had to really pull hard to detach him. Grabbed my camera & took a picture of the tick & also the wound it left just in case someone out there runs across the same thing sometime. Doctor said to keep an eye on the bite & watch for symptoms of Lime disease...... Geeezzzz, it's been quite a trip so far!! (UPDATE....It's a year later now & the last Lyme disease test I had done a couple of months ago showed everything still clear) Remember, the above blog was a year ago in 2007.