Last Year's 4th of July

I had never felt such awful, gut wrenching pain in my life. I've given birth to 2 children and going through labor for 18 to 22 hours was a walk in the park compared to this.

Just before our vacation to the lake, I had my tubes tied. Yay! A whole week of screwing without any worries. Until July 3rd.

Hubby and I went to the lake to spend time on our boat and with each other. The lake had a fireworks show on the third so we made our way halfway out to the middle of the lake. I had half a bottle of wine, the show was being wrapped up and we made our way back to the dock where our slip was. We pulled in and tied off the boat. I then started unloading the boat and made my most critical first mistake. I didn't ground myself before jumping from boat to dock. I had both hands full and all of the boats started coming in at once creating an awful wake.

As soon as I jumped, boat went one way and I didn't jump far enough. I landed half on and half off of the dock with the boat swinging back towards me as my body started going in the water. The pain was indescribable. A hand came up from the water and pushed me back up on the dock. It was hubby. He saw what happened and jumped in the water, loosing his keys in the process.

I laid on the dock screaming. I had a death grip on my towels and bottle of empty wine. People came over and asked if I needed help. Duh jack-ass! A woman put a frozen bottle of water on my back and helped me to the truck. I couldn't stand up straight and could barely breath. Hubby was pissed. We had just got down to the lake and I already was screwing up our plans. Our whole week long vacation was ruined. We made it to our cabin and I took a couple of Darvacet. The pills helped me go to sleep but after a couple of hours, I woke up vomiting. I threw up at least 4 times and each time it was excruciating. I hardly got any sleep.

The next morning, I told hubby I needed to go to the emergency room. We drove there and found out that I had 3 broken ribs. They gave me percocet and told me to monitor my breathing so that my lungs wouldn't fill up. They also told me not to bind my ribs and soak in a warm to hot tub of water. Luckily we had a hot tub right outside our cabin and the next day I made my way to the tub. It was 93 degrees. I didn't take any water with me which I should have done. I started to feel funny and climbed out of the tub and sat on the utility box next to it. I woke up looking at a few pairs of sandals laying on my side. Apparently I had passed out and fell off the box. People were asking me where I was staying so that someone could help me. Hubby was summoned and I was forbidden to ever go there again on my own.

We made it through the week and headed back home. When we got there, I sat in our hot tub. Ah it felt great! Except for the now unbearable burning when I peed. I went to the doctor for a second time. The first was when I got back into town and they found out that I had pneumonia. When I went the second time, they found out that I had a bladder infection as well. The pneumonia cleared up and the infection took over. After the bladder infection was cleared up, I had to go back. This time I had a different doctor as I was getting irritated that I was contiually sick. I finally had to go in for a chest x-ray to make sure that I didn't have a collapsed lung. Still had pneumonia, no collapsed lung and oodles and oodles of pills to take. My menu for meds was as follows:

• 2 percocet in the morning
• 2 percocet in the afternoon
• 2 percocet at night
• 1 antibiotic at night
• 6 muscle relaxers to go with each dose of percocets

Clearly you can see that my driving abilities would be impared but I became immuned to the side effects of drowsiness. It took a total of 6 weeks for my ribs to heal. We went on a week long trip this past summer at the same time and I told all of my associates "Please pray that I don't break my ribs again this year!"