my husband - the radioactive man

A few weeks ago I had to go to Boston for work. This was exciting for me because work was paying me go on a shoot for a story on one of my favorite games AND paying for me to have a little visit with my family as well as Lisa, Ben and their new baby. The night before I left things got ugly because Alex got sick, so sick that I was going to cancel the trip. Somehow, by the time morning rolled around Alex managed to pull everything together and give me a ride to the airport at 6:15 a.m., so I figured how sick could he be? Well, it turned out he was pretty sick; by the time I got off the plane I had 4 messages on my cell phone, all from Alex. In the first one he told me that they fit him in for a doctor's appointment at 10. Then he was at the doctor's and waiting to see what they had to say. The next one was from the emergency room, an ambulance had brought him there. The last message was a very sad sounding Alex telling me he was admitted to the hospital and needed to get some tests done, including a colonoscopy. I listened to all 4 of these with tears welling up in my eyes while we taxied to the gate in Boston. I felt so guilty, I wished I had never left. I stayed in the airport for about an hour making frantic phone calls and finally got in touch with Alex after talking to about 7 very nice people at the hospital. Alex and I decided that it was best for me to stay in Boston that night since I had just spent about 6 hours on a plane and it probably wasn't a good idea to cram myself into another airline seat for at least 24 hours, especially because there was nothing I could do if I went back home except sit in the hospital and worry. Our good friend Wil went to visit Alex at the hospital and called me to give me regular updates, so some of my guilt was lifted there. I was scheduled to stay in Boston for 4 days, but instead I went to visit Lisa, Ben and the new bambino that night, went to the shoot the next day and then flew out of Boston exactly 25 hours from when I arrived. When I got back to Oakland Wil greeted me with a delicious turkey burger and a ride to the hospital.

Visiting someone in the hospital at 10:30 at night isn't the easiest task but I finally got clearance. I then proceeded to get lost for about a half hour before I actually got to where I was going. I don't know what was more sad; seeing Alex with a saggy gown on all sprawled out in a hospital bed or the fact that he had to share this fairly small room with 3 other guys. He did have his own television to occupy his time, but if he wanted to watch it he had to keep his privacy curtain open (for me this would have been a dilemma because the fellow directly across from Alex had his curtain open almost all the time). The other dudes in the room seemed to be in much worse shape than Alex, there was a lot of moaning and grunting going on. Alex wasn't too bothered by all this, but he was complaining about how hungry he was and how he felt fine and just wanted to go home and to work. His colonoscopy came out fine and so did all the blood work, so whatever had been going on with him (which stopped about 24 hours after it started) was still a mystery. He was discharged the next day around noon and actually went to work the day after that. Obviously he's much more of a go-getter than I'll ever be.

Since they didn't come up with any answers at the hospital as to what might be going on with Alex's insides, he got scheduled for more appointments and more tests. He had one done today... a Meckel scan. This is to test for a little pocket or pouch in the small intestine by injecting some radioactive dye into the patient and then looking at the dye with some big ol' imaging equipment. At first they told me I could stay in the room with Alex during the test, since it takes about an hour for the dye to flow where they need to look at it, but then I told them I was pregnant and the plans changed a little. The exchange went something like this:

Should I not be in here because I'm pregnant?

Hmmm, well, yeah, I guess you should wait out there. Better safe than sorry. The equipment doesn't emit anything radioactive, but your husband will.

So he'll be radioactive today?

Sure, but only for about 12 hours.

I asked Alex if he wanted a super-baby, because if he did I could stay in the room. I mean, think about it, I could give birth to the next Spiderman or something. How rad would that be? I ended up going to the waiting room for the next hour, but they left the door open to the room, so I could see Alex napping for just about the whole hour.

Now we have to wait a week to find out if anything showed up in the scan (and about 4 months to find out if our baby will be a super hero). If the Meckel scan turns up clean there's a possibility that Alex will get to swallow a camera that will take pictures as it travels through him. We're keeping our fingers crossed for this one, there's nothing quite like a Fantastic Voyage.