I was only in the hospital for a day this time, before they sent me home. They ruled out my appendix, food poisoning, an infection, any sort of stones, and my gall bladder with a fair amount of certainty. This time, I came home with some pain killers that can probably drop an elephant. I'm almost afraid to take one of them, but if the pains starts up again, I'll need to.

I go into a gastrointestinal place on Friday to see if they can figure it out. They'll likely schedule me to have a scope run down my throat or up my butt to possibly see what Cat scans and echo scans can't see.

For now, I'm not in pain, but I know that can drastically change in under an hour.

Thank you to all who prayed for me or wished me well in my last couple journals. I'm positive that they'll figure it out. I just hope it's pretty fast so I won't need to deal with pain that is a 9 or 10 on a scale of 0 to 10. I normally have a fairly high pain tolerance, but this has shown me new levels of pain that I don't want to experience again. Yes, it's worse than accidentally stepping on a Monopoly house in your bare feet and having it grind up between your toes!

I was more prepared for the second hospital visit. I took a 40-inch blue floppy bunny plush in with me. I'm so glad I did too. There were no rooms in the Emergence part of the hospital for most of the day, and I was parked on a temporary bed in the hall, along with many other people. Those beds are not comfortable like the ones in the actual rooms are. The bunny was both a pillow and something to lean on when sitting up so I didn't ache. It put many of the staff into a good smiley mood when they saw the big bunny, despite the intense over-crowded day they were dealing with. I was the only adult in sight with a plushie, but that's part of what made people smile.