Last Thursday morning during breakfast, Chad called me to say he wasn’t coming to school. He said he’d been up all night with nausea and vomiting… had been having stomach cramps… and was running a temp. He said Raef wanted to take him to the emergency room but he said he was “feeling a little better now and the cramps have stopped… so I’m just going to rest and take it easy today.”
After the call, I told David and Dub what was going on and Dub said “I bet it’s appendicitis, we’ve got to get him to the hospital. I called Chad back and told him to get dressed, we were taking him to the ER. So, within about 15 minutes we were at Chad and Raef’s house. David stayed there with Dub, Matty and Alyssa while Raef and I loaded Chad into my car and I broke just about every traffic law on the books getting him to Cox Medical Center in Branson. When we got there, they loaded him onto a gurney and took him back for tests. Sure enough, it was a ruptured appendix and they rushed him into surgery. The operation took about 2 1/2 hours and he was a really sick dude but but the doctors performed their magic and saved his life. They said if we’d gotten him there 30 minutes later they probably wouldn’t have been able to save him.
So, with Chad in the hospital and the gang taking turns staying there with him, I was going to be handling school by myself. David said “I’m not a teacher, but I can help out.” So David has been helping me at school all this week. Chad’s doing fine now and came home from the hospital yesterday. He says he’ll be back in school with me on Monday. He’s a dear friend and we’re just so happy that he’s recovered and going to be fine.
With Chad in the hospital, we cancelled our planned gang get-together last weekend and are planning to do it next weekend. We’ve invited Dante and Silas so everyone will have a chance to meet them.
So that’s what’s been happening here. Sometimes our laid-back life here at the lake gets pretty crazy. xoxo Ben and David
