So when last we left the spellbinding story of my Gallbladder Adventure my husband was transporting me to the Emergency Room so that, OMG! THE PAIN! PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!

So we finally got there, just in time for us to…hurry up and wait.( FYI-apparently midnight Saturday night is the primo time for visiting the ER.) But happily, between his iPod and his Blackberry my husband was able to entertain himself. And I passed the time by hanging out in the hospital bathroom.

Now, I must tell you something about myself. (YOU: And this is different, how?) And it is that I have a MAJOR problem with germs, real or imagined. And I am S-E-R-I-O-S-L-Y OCD about this.

For example, let’s take the “towel situation” here at home.

We of course have dishtowels here that we use to clean the kitchen. But I am only able to use them if I am the one to take a clean towel out of the drawer and if I am the only one use it to do the kitchen chores. Once I hang it over the handle of the dishwasher I physically cannot use it anymore. I just can’t. Because, even though it is just the two of us here, living together in the bonds of holy matrimony for fourteen years and germ-ing it up together, if I even TRY and touch the towel again, or look at it, or stand on the same side of the kitchen as the dishwasher, I can feel in my nervous system each individual germ marching up from the towel onto my skin, cheering and chugging back some beer as they prepare to have their raucous way with my body.

So needless to say, public bathrooms are kind of a problem for me.

But people, on this night I was SETTING UP HOUSE in that hospital bathroom. If I could have, I would have moved in an air bed and a La-Z-Boy, because that’s just how much time we were spending together, that bathroom and I.

(And have I mentioned yet that I was wearing my jammies, my jammies that I dearly love, my jammies that have gotten me through so many bad days over the past 3 years, my jammies that are like a second skin? In the public bathroom? Touching Public Bathroom Stuff? AND I DIDN’T EVEN CARE? That is what pain can do to you, my friends.)

However, three-and-a-half hours later and four visit to my new little hidey-hole later I was starting to feel some relief, so I decided to tell my husband that we could go back home. But then, suddenly, I heard, “Ryan?”

And let me tell you-if a multitude of the heavenly host had suddenly descended from the sky in that moment and started serenading me, it would not have sounded sweeter than the sound of someone calling my name, telling me that I was next.

So I burst out of the bathroom and my husband booked it down the hallway in order to let The Name-Calling Man know that, “Yes! I am here! Please take me back to a room and heal me now!”

So I blissfully (if somewhat hunchback-edly) followed The Wonderful Man Who Called My Name back to the treatment rooms, right into Room 7, my new home away from home. And once I changed and got into bed I was finally able to…hurry up and wait some more. (Unexpected Bonus Information I Received While In The ER: Apparently walk-in patients come third, after people who arrive in ambulances and people who are complaining of chest pains. Whatever.)

However, the representatives from Admission, And How Will You Be Paying For This? could not have shown up more quickly, offering me the soothing panacea of approximately 8 trillion forms to sign, plus explaining, in loving detail, the entire history of hospital policies and procedures since the beginning of all time. Like I wasn’t in enough pain already.

Thankfully my husband was there to perform the role of Someone Who Was Actually Listening To What They Were Saying, and he didn’t seem to hear anything sketchy or objectionable.

But honestly, I don’t have a friggin’ clue as to what I signed that night. I would’ve signed anything they wanted if it would’ve made the drugs come a little more quickly. So it is entirely possible that a hospital representative could appear on our doorstep one day bearing proof that I accidentally signed away my husband’s flat-screen TV. (Although I really hope not, because I have no idea how I would explain that to him. The surgery card only goes so far.)

But finally, FINALLY, once the nice bureaucrats left, and once I’d completely abandoned all hope of any pain relief ever, in this lifetime or the next, there in my doorway,  shimmering in the glow of a glorious golden light stood the ER doctor or, as I preferred to think of him, The Man Who Could Get Those Drugs A-Flowing.

To be continued…