By Dom Cioffi
As my wife and I sat having dinner last Thursday night, I commented how disheartening the start of a new year could be.
The company I work for experienced record sales in 2019, but all of that was erased on Jan. 1. Everything was reset and the pressure returned – and actually increased – as expectations for 2020 kicked in.
As we finished our meal, I mentioned how grateful I was to be staring down a 3-day weekend just so I could attend to a number of to-do’s that had slipped past me with the intensity of work and flip of the calendar.
That’s when God, life, the universe (whatever all-encompassing word you’re comfortable with) stepped in to intervene.
About an hour after our meal, as I was sitting in the living room relaxing, I began to hear faint noises coming from another part of our house. I ignored it at first, thinking it was the television upstairs, but 15 minutes later it returned so I stood up to investigate.
As I walked down the hallway, I realized the noise was coming from the master bathroom and was, in fact, my wife groaning oddly. I immediately inquired if she was okay. Her reply set the tone for the five days.
“Something is terribly wrong,” she whimpered. I could hear the desperation in her voice, so I rushed in to find her curled up on the bathroom floor-writhing in pain.
My brain immediately snapped into an investigative mode as I tried to discern what had gone wrong. She tried to answer my questions, but her pain was worsening with every minute. She then began to vomit violently. Sensing that it could be severe food poisoning, I finally snatched her up and put her in my truck.
I then drove to the nearest hospital emergency room, which was roughly 20 minutes away. My foot maxed out the acceleration pedal as we ripped through the city streets. I was convinced I was going to get pulled over, and would have been, had a police officer crossed my path.
I pulled in front of the emergency room entrance and dragged my wife through the doors. At this point she was screaming in pain. The entire room took notice. Within minutes she had bypassed 25 other people to be rushed into an examination room.
The doctors examined her as I stood by helpless. It’s true that watching someone you care about suffer is worse than going through it yourself. Within minutes, they had an IV in her arm and were administering pain medications, which dramatically calmed her down. In fact, she was barely conscious by the time they wheeled her in for a CT scan and ultrasound.
By 4 a.m. the doctors had determined that it was not food poisoning, but rather an attack of acute colitis. However, what caused the colitis still remained a mystery.
Colitis is a digestive disorder that causes inflammation of the bowels. It can be chronic or acute, but in most cases, it causes severe and sometimes immobilizing pain. Colitis can be caused by a number of factors including an auto-immune response, a chemical response, an infection, or a vascular reaction due to a lack of blood supply to the infected area.
Throughout the weekend, as my wife slowly progressed forward, the doctors would periodically check-in to examine her, admitting that her case was a bit mysterious.
In the end, it seems that a double-dose of antibiotics (one for a sickness just prior to Christmas and one for a small mole-removal procedure done a week earlier) had completely eradicated the probiotics in her stomach, which may have allowed the colitis to take hold. We now know more about probiotics than ever have before and fully plan to make sure they are part of our diet in the future.
Her prognosis is great; she should fully recover in 4-6 weeks, but during that time she has to be extremely careful of what she consumes. Basically, her stomach is not happy with her and will likely rebel if she makes one wrong move.
And so, here I sit in a hospital room on a Sunday evening writing my review. The last four days have been a blur and absolutely nothing like I anticipated.
Needless to say, going to the theater was low on my priority list. Given that I’ve basically lived at the hospital since Thursday, attending a film never transpired, so this week I’m writing sans movie. Apologies, but I’m confident no one will fault me for missing one this week.
There’s an old saying, “Man plans, God laughs.” That certainly was the case for my family this past weekend and probably a good lesson for all of us to remember.
Here’s to a healthy 2020! Got a question or comment for Dom? You can email him at [email protected].
