Like most of the east coast, we got a pretty decent amount of snow on Sunday night. I’m not sure exactly how much we got in our little section of North Carolina, I heard it was around two to four inches. It was enough for all of the schools to close down, anyway.

My plan for Monday consisted of, well, nothing. I wanted to get a couple of freelance articles written, maybe tidy up the house a little and make dinner, but that was about it. No major plans on the agenda. I was thinking how fun it was going to be to get more pictures of Catie frolicking in the snow like we did on our last snow day. As is usually the case, life had other plans.

If you follow me on Twitter, you already know this, but on Monday morning, we ended up in the emergency room. Dave started having chest pains, his face turned all red, and it seemed like he was on the verge of hyperventilating. I’ve never seen him have any sort of episode like this, but it scared the living hell out of me, so we immediately set off for the ER. I paused for about 90 seconds to drop Catie off with our next-door neighbor, but that was the only thing that slowed me down. (And seriously, our neighbors? LOVE. SO. MUCH.)

Fortunately, if you find yourself at the admitting desk of an ER, and you use the words “chest” and “pain,” they tend to get you to a room tout de suite. They ran some tests on Dave: EKG, chest x-ray, bloodwork. And of course, as with all hospital visits, there was a whole lot of sitting and waiting. So much waiting.

Everything came back normal, so we don’t really know what happened. Panic attack? Too much stress and caffeine? Weird reaction to some new medication? No idea. They sent him home with a few Valium and an order to follow up with his regular doctor for more tests. Which I fully intend to make him do, because Dave’s granddad died when he was 50, and I’m terrified of something like that happening to him. Dave keeps reassuring me that his granddad had some sort of heart defect, plus he ate bacon and fried bread (i.e., white bread that’s been deep fried in bacon fat) for breakfast every morning, but still. I don’t eff around when one of his symptoms includes chest pains.

So yeah, it was basically a horrible, terrifying experience, and it seems that we have already broken my “no hospitals in 2009” goal, but at least Dave seems to be ok now, which I’m thankful for. And Catie had a great time at the neighbors’ house. When I went to pick her up, Meredith (the mom-next-door) was feeding about 8 of the neighborhood kids lunch, and Catie was sitting at the dining table with the big kids, chowing down on chicken nuggets and apple slices. Kind of hilarious to see my relatively tiny girl sitting with all of these other kids who are about 7-10 years old.

That night, I was in the kitchen making dinner. Dave came over to give me a kiss.
Him: “Thanks for being such a good wife today.”
Me: “That’s ok, thanks for not dropping dead.”
Him: “You’re welcome! Anytime.”

We joke, because sometimes that’s the only way we know how to cope with these really scary things.