Double Death-Defying Day

On Monday, I was nearly run over by a truck and ended up in the Emergency Room. But surprisingly, not in that order.

At 2 AM Monday morning, I awoke with massive abdominal pain. The only time I'd ever felt worse pain in my life was during recovery from major surgery about 8 years ago. Given the intensity, I thought for sure my appendix was about to rupture. So I woke up my wife and we headed down to the ER.

After a several hours of blood tests and CT scans, they ruled out all the possible causes that would have required cutting me open to solve. The diagnosis they finally landed on is just a case of Epiploic Appendigitis (that "g" is not a typo). Horribly painful to be sure, but it's self-limiting and I should recover in 5 to 10 days.

Cranky but relieved, I headed for home, certain that I'd just dodged the only bullet of the day.

As my wife and I were crossing the street near the hospital, a jerk in a big truck ran a red light and nearly plowed us over. Due to my illness, I really couldn't run or jump. So I just shoved my wife towards safety. Thankfully, she had the same instinct and grabbed my arm and pulled me towards safety. It was all kind of a blur, with each of us feeling our quick thinking had just saved the other (and so I guess we were both right). The truck slammed on its breaks and stopped several feet past the crosswalk where we just were, passing within a foot of me in the process.

A guy in another vehicle waiting at the stoplight shouted out to us "today's your lucky day!" He didn't know the half of it.