~ Rewind

What do you do when something happens in your life that causes you to stop and take pause, has you taking a few steps back and looking at your life and the way you’ve lived it? Are you satisfied with what you see or do you find yourself wishing you had done some things differently?

Monday night, KJ came back to the bedroom and told me he wasn’t feeling well. So he sat in a chair and I started peppering him with questions. Are you nauseated? Is your arm numb/tingling? Having trouble breathing?

He was flushed, had some tingling in his left arm and was hot behind his neck.

I told him it was probably worth a trip to the ER and we had better get going. Then he goes all girly on me. Do I have time to shower? What should I wear? What shoes do you think I should wear?

Seriously???? You’re going to the ER, not preparing to take a stroll down a fashion runway. *shakes my head* At least now I know where Lynsay gets it. *sheesh*

I got him to Eisenhower about 8ish and at 2:3oam, they admitted him. Because there were no beds available in the hospital, he had to spend the night in the ER. I left shortly after they admitted him and was back up there about 8:30am. At 10, they came and moved him upstairs to a room and at 12:30, they took him down for a 3.5 hour nuclear stress test. After numerous blood tests, several EKGs and an Echocardiogram, they concluded that the problem wasn’t cardiac. They kicked him out and sent him home about 6pm Tuesday night.

The close to 24 hours that he was there, I gave the impression that I wasn’t worried, that he was fine. I was calm and cool, trying to keep him from freaking out. It’s funny how we can project one set of feelings outward while keeping a whole other set of feelings locked inside.

Inside, I was terrified. Inside, I was trembling with the fear of losing him. Inside, the last 29 years of our life together flashed before my eyes . . . our early dating years, our wedding, the birth of Ryan and Lynsay, the building of a life together, of raising our children. Granted, it hasn’t always been easy and we’ve had our share of tough times. But whenever we hit a speed bump or whenever the tough times caught up to us, we were there to face them together, as a united front.

So, what does one do when something happens to make you stop and push the rewind button on the pages of your life? You put your big girl panties on and plaster a smile on your face. Then you crawl up on that narrow hospital bed, cuddle up close, reach behind you to take his hand in yours and fall asleep.