Just when I thoght it was over...

...2004 comes through with one last load of crap for me: Christmas in the hospital.

Christmas Eve started out pretty good. Breakfast at home, wrapped some presents and went to see the new Phantom of the Opera movie in the early evening. We ended up seeing a later show than planned and didn't have time to eat dinner before the show. After the movie we visited for a while with some friends and finally headed home about 9:00. On the way home we stopped for a late dinner.

At the restaurant I could tell my hubby was starting to feel bad, his color didn't look good and after our food arrived he pushed it away and said he wasn't hungry. He was on his way outside to get some air when he suddenly passed out. Unfortunately I wasn't quite close enough behind him to grab him and break his fall. He hit his mouth on the tile floor and bit all the way through his chin with his two front teeth, right under his lower lip. He was out for maybe 20 seconds, and when I got him turned over the blood was just pouring out of his mouth. The restaurant called 911 and the paramedics then an ambulance came, they stabilized him and took him to our local hospital. I sat in ER for a long, long time while they took x-rays, blood, EGK, cat scan, and put about 10 stitches in his chin. They had him on a backboard for about 3 hours until the x-rays were looked at and they "cleared his neck" of any injuries. He said that was the worst part. Finally at about 1:00 am they decided to admit him overnight for observation. His white blood cell count was really, really high, so that could have meant that he had an infection that we didn't know about, or it could have been a response to the trauma and blood loss. I finally got home at about 4:30 am and had a bowl of oatmeal and fed the dogs, then slept for a couple of hours.

They had him on monitors all night and took another blood panel in the morning, and everything looked OK. So the only thing they could tell us is he probably just got dehydrated and was tired and hungry. Panic might have started him feeling bad, but the rest of it contributed more to him blacking out. They released him from the hospital at 2:00 pm on Christmas Day. We hadn't wrapped any presents to each other, so we did that and then opened them and our stockings late in the afternoon, had a quiet dinner then our best friends came over for pie.

We slept in this morning and he says he is feeling fine, I guess there aren't many nerve endings in your chin so that isn't giving him too much trouble, although his teeth and jaw are sore. We had a lot of plans for yesterday that got cancelled, but I didn't care, I was just glad that in the end he was OK. You really realize how much you love someone when they are in pain and you can't do anything about it. We are both off the whole week so I am thankful for that.