Weekend Musings: A Scary Few Days

Hello and welcome to another weekend musings here on MorganLinton.com. As you all know usually my weekend musings are full of all the exciting things going on in my life. While there have been some wonderful and exciting things going on over the last few weeks, the last few days have been incredibly hard.

Since so many of you have been following my blog for the last 4+ years I like to keep you in the loop on everything that happens in my life, the good, and the bad. So if you want to read about domain investing, startups, WordPress, and all the other things I usually talk about here you’ll have to wait until next week. This weekend musings is much more personal but this blog is MorganLinton.com so I feel it is important to share.

On Tuesday night Daina started to get the chills and after taking her temperature we realized that she had an 102.9 degree fever. After giving her Advil her fever went back down and she went to sleep happy to be feeling a bit more normal again. Wednesday morning Daina woke-up with an 103.5 degree fever and was no longer responding to the Advil. We called our Doctor who was able to see us immediately. By the time we got to the Doctors office it seemed that the Advil had kicked-in and her fever dropped to 101 degrees.

The Doctor did a number of tests including putting pressure on her internal organs to see if there was any pain but they felt fine at the time. Given her symptoms it looked like a case of the flu and she was given a script for Tamiflu and an antibiotic. On Thursday Daina woke up with incredible flank pain, we called the Doctor and he checked her lab results finding that her white blood cell count was very high, there was something wrong with her kidney. The Doctor told us to head to the hospital.

We arrived at UCLA Medical Center on Thursday night. Thankfully we live less than a mile from the hospital which is ranked one of the top hospitals in the US. Arriving in the emergency room the wait time was under 1 minute before we were being seen by the triage nurse, five minutes later we were in a room and soon were seen by a number of different Doctors. They did an ultrasound to see if this could potentially be kidney stones or galbladder stones which thankfully came back negative. After getting all the tests results they determined that she was suffering from a severe kidney infection and required IV antibiotics.

In the morning we were moved out of the emergency room to a room in the observation center. Friday was a rough day as she was in a lot of pain and on strong antibiotics and fluids to keep her hydrated. Friday night she was feeling a lot better which was a huge relief. Then came Saturday morning.

On Saturday Daina woke up with a new pain in the center of her stomach. The Doctors said that they wanted to rule out that there was anything else going on and schedule an emergency CT scan. This meant that Daina had to drink a giant bottle of something that resembled grape juice (used for contrast in a CT scan) and have an injection in her IV that caused her body to flush with warmth also making her very nauseous.

After this came what I think was the longest two hours of my entire life as we awaited the results. Was it more than a kidney infection?

We went for a walk outside, Daina was still in pain and had to walk very slowly as we exited the hospital entering the outside world and the LA heatwave. I was scared, sad, and reflective while of course being strong and confident for Daina. But the reality was, I didn’t know what was going to happen, I just knew that no matter what we would work it out.

At 2:00PM the Doctor came back to the room, “We have the results,” she said. Then she threw her arm up in the air to give Daina a high-five, the tests looked normal! The CT scan showed that there was a serious infection in the right kidney so the original diagnosis was correct. The new pain Daina was feeling was bloating in her stomach that had a lot to do with her lack of appetite over the past three days. All her internal organs looked good, no tumors, nothing out of the ordinary.

Last night Daina was doing much better and she was released from the hospital. After three days of almost no sleep and some intense time in the hospital we were finally home. This morning Daina is feeling much better and hopefully she will be fully healed by mid-week. For those keeping track our wedding is this coming Saturday so not a moment too soon!

I could not be more relieved and happy that Daina is okay. I spent every single minute in the hospital with her and luckily we are both pretty small people which meant we could share the hospital bed together. For anyone who has read down this far, take your loved one and give him or her a great big hug. I have never felt more fortunate in my entire life and I can’t wait to make her my wife on Saturday. Life is short, spend as much time as you can with the people that you love and next time you’re up at night working away on your computer just stop, there are more important things in life.

(Photo Credit)

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton