Saturday afternoon my upper stomach started hurting. Bad. Susan and I have developed a pain scale (from 1 to 10) to let each other know how much something hurts. These stomach cramps started around a 3 or so. By mid-afternoon, it was an 8. I tried everything to relieve the pain — PeptoBismal, Tums, Aspirin, you name it. I tried eating a little something in case these were just really strong hunger pangs. I sat on the toilet for a while, thinking maybe that might help. Nothing. I eventually laid down, curled up into a ball and took a nap, hoping that when I awoke the pain would be gone.<\/p>\n

For a while, it was — then it returned. I started worrying. Your upper stomach is pretty close to your heart. Your gall bladder’s around there somewhere too. The way this was hurting, I figured something serious must be wrong. My dad had just stopped by to visit when the pain started in again. Once it got bad enough that I was visibly in pain, we decided to take a trip to the after hours clinic.<\/p>\n

Dad took me to the Mercy afterhours clinic while Susan took the kids over to my mom’s. After the obligitory ten minutes of paperwork, we were moved to a waiting room. The pain began residing once we were there. Susan showed up a few minutes later. The pain was almost completely gone, but I had a new problem. I needed to poop.<\/p>\n

And so, while waiting for the nurse to call me back, I slipped into a side restroom and did what I had to do. After that, I felt great! Of course, moments later the doctor called me back. He asked about the pain and I told him the following.<\/p>\n

“Well, my stomach had been hurting all day. Then I got here and took a crap in your waiting room. Now I feel much better.”<\/p>\n

The doctor looked at me. “You took a crap in my waiting room?”<\/p>\n

“Well, not IN the waiting room. In the bathroom off to the side,” I said.<\/p>\n

“Ah, that’s good,” he said. “I would have to bill you for that separately.”<\/p>\n

And so, as a small town part-time doctor who gets stuck with the weekend shift, he told me it could have been either stomach flu, or a digestive issue, an ulcer, my gall bladder, or a heart attack. Or acid reflux. If it keeps happening, I should see my normal doctor. In the meantime, I should buy some Maylox.<\/p>\n

One ten dollar co-pay and one turd later, we were back on our way. Susan thought the whole thing was pretty funny until Sunday, when she began having stomach pains …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saturday afternoon my upper stomach started hurting. Bad. Susan and I have developed a pain scale (from 1 to 10) to let each other know how much something hurts. These stomach cramps started around a 3 or so. By mid-afternoon, it was an 8. I tried everything to relieve the pain — PeptoBismal, Tums, Aspirin, you name it. I tried eating a little something in case these were just really strong hunger pangs. I sat on the toilet for a while, thinking maybe that might help. Nothing. I eventually laid down, curled up into a ball and took a nap,… (read more)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}