I had hoped to spend this week here in the blog world talking about Valentine’s Day.  I certainly didn’t anticipate spending 48 hours in the hospital.  What a whirlwind this week has been.

Monday morning right after I put my boys on the school bus I had an extremely sharp pain in my chest that traveled up my neck and into my jaw.  It stopped me in my tracks and lasted about 10-15 seconds.  I had just taken some pills and even though this pain was way worse than a pill going down the wrong way, I rationalized that was what happened. 

Mark was out of town so I got myself ready for the day and headed into the Hearts at Home office to meet with a couple of people.  My chest and my right arm ached all morning.  Finally one of our leaders said, “Jill, you look flush…do you feel ok?”  By that time I was connecting way too many dots.  I shared with them what had happened that morning and they, of course, all urged me to go have it checked out.

I headed to the ER and the next thing I knew I was being admitted to the hospital Monday afternoon. There were three small blood clots in my lungs and they were concerned more would be in my legs.  After they did a sonogram of my legs on Tuesday afternoon and they found no clots in my legs they allowed me to go home because whatever was going on in my lungs was much less of a threat than they originally thought (the blockages are in 4th and 5th generation veins—they really are concerned about 1st and 2nd generation blockages more). 

It was quite an ordeal because I have small veins.  During the CT scan, they had to inject a dye into my IV.  Well, the injection blew out a vein and my left arm looked like an elephant leg for two days.  That was so painful and honestly was a distraction to everything else going on. 

But I’m home now—I spent today (Wednesday) resting.  And I’m doing the same for tomorrow.  They did give me the ok to travel to Georgia this weekend to move Erica.  Erica is moving to Augusta, GA to be near her hubby who is doing his Army job training at Ft. Gordon.  I’m going to make that decision tomorrow dependent on how I feel.  If I do go, I just have to double up on aspirin and stop every hour to stretch my legs. 

Two moments I have to share from this ordeal: one funny and one poignant:

Funny: You know the joke about your mom always telling you to make sure you have on clean underwear in case you are ever in an accident?  Well I would add on to that to make sure you shave your legs because you never know when you’ll have an unexpected sonogram of your legs!  Seriously…I apologized to the sono tech that she was going to have to push through the trees to accomplish her task.  How embarrassing! 

Poignant: Mark was at home with the boys Tuesday afternoon (snow day!) and he said, “What do you think would be a good Valentine’s gift for mom?”  Without skipping a beat Austin said, “I think a new lung would be a good idea.”  What a sweet thought from my sometimes challenging 13-year-old!

Thank you so much for your prayers and concerns.  I truly saw the Christian community at it’s very best!

Now….let’s focus on Valentine’s Day!