never EVER use the word P-L-A-N around me again.

Yeah, I REALLY learned my lesson on Friday. I had it all planned out, but there were other things in store for us.

Friday I spent all day mowing the grass, cleaning the garage, cleaning the house (oh my goodness, i just remembered that there are no sheets on Will's bed. oops.) My mother got to the house about 5:30 with Will & we had dinner about 7. Everyone was settling down for the night when Matt had a REALLY bad episode. This apparently triggered something & he was in some serious pain. I took him to the ER at I think about 8?? I'm really not sure what time it was. Anyway, we got there & got into a room quickly but then waited about 2 or 3 hours to see a doctor. There was some sort of emergency upstairs & the ER was shorthanded.

When we finally did see the doctor, holy cow, this guy was NOT the best we've encountered. We explained everything...trying to make it to Cleveland on Saturday .....just need help with pain....Matt thinks he has an abcess that is causing the pain. (oh yeah, by the way, if you are queasy, you may want to stop reading here & skip down to the end. It's probably not pleasant to read about, but colitis is not a very PC butterflies and rainbows kind of disease. Ive heard the words rectum & anus more times than I care to remember. I'll try to go easy on you first-timers.)

12:00 am: So right...the doctor. We filled him in, answered all the dumb questions that the good doctors don't ask ("are you having any diarrhea?" He has COLITIS - YES - HE HAS DIARRHEA) & then he starts poking on Matt. HARD - all over his abdomen. I don't think of the 10 or so doctors we've seen in the past weeks, anyone has done something like this. I mean, they might touch lightly, to feel the inflammation (it's actually hot to the touch in certain areas where his colon is really inflamed), but they don't push & prod. This guy was apparently trying to rearrange Matt's colon. Matt jumped & yelled, "HEY HEY NO! WHOA! DUDE! STOP IT!" The 'dude' part cracked me up. Matt actually swiped at him to hit his hands & the doctor stopped and kind of shrugged. So then he looked at the abscess, "yup, that's what it is." Then he said he was going to admit Matt, have a surgeon look at it, etc etc. Ugh. At this point we're thinking we will never be going to Cleveland in about 12 hours. We were finally in a room at 4:00am.

Funny story (well, not really funny) from the ER. A woman was in there with her mother. The woman was crying hysterically. I've never heard an adult cry like this. Non stop for at least an hour. Heaving sobs. Her mother would page the nurse & whine "my daughter needs help! Someone needs to bring her some pain medicine!" My heart really went out to them. It was awful. Well, about an hour into the drama, I heard the nurse go in & say "The doctor said you can't have any Dilaudid." The woman didn't even reply, she just quit crying. Not immediately, but pretty quickly. Crazy. Sad, too. Very sad.

4:00 am: Back to our story...we got in to the room, like i said, at 4am. Matt was in the bathroom when the nurse came in. A nice but OH MY GOD LOUD woman. She was telling us the oddest things -like that Matt could get a flu shot if he wanted (no thanks)...how about a pneumonia shot? (um, no)...have you ever had a blood transfusion? (why yes, in this hospital. 2 or 3 weeks ago.) That triggered something & she said, "I have some bad news for you. I have to swab his mouth & his backside." I didn't really understand what any of this had to do with a blood transfusion, but whatever. So I played along, "by 'backside' you mean....?" She said, "his bottom. His rectum." I sat straight up and said very plainly, "No. You are not going to do that." She said, "it's just a little q-tip." I said, "I don't care what it is. You are not sticking anything anywhere near his bottom. That's why we're here...he has an abscess there. That's not going to happen." She stared back & me & said, "okay, I'll just write down that you refused that." Yeah, you do that.

A nurse gave Matt some dilaudid & we both went to sleep until about 7.

7:00 am (flight leaves in 5 hours): We wake up & think...'what now?' Matt said call the GI office....which I hate doing, because once you are in the hospital, they don't like to talk to you....it's a stepping-on-doctors-toes kind of thing. But I called & got the FABULOUS Nurse Connie. I had spoken to her the night before. She was so so compassionate & sweet to me. I filled her in on what was going on & basically just said, "what should we do? How can we get things moving here?" She told me to call our nurse in, explain (again) the situation & ask her nicely to call the GI on call & request that she come in. quickly. We did this and what do you know...the GI on call came in within about an hour.

9:00 - GI gets there (Dr. D). We explain everything, she looks at the abscess. She is very worried about us traveling considering the abscess. Matt is on a lot of steroids & other immuno-suppressant drugs...the possibility was real that the abscess could get further infected & he could become septic. Very dangerous. She made us promise that if we did make it, we'd go STRAIGHT TO THE ER at the Cleveland Clinic. She was very clear about this - STRAIGHT TO THE ER. During all this, we were trying to get in touch with the surgeon in Cleveland. Matt had called the 'general' Cleveland Clinic number & asked for Dr.R in the colorectal surgery department. He was transferred & a DOCTOR answered our call. This still shocks me. A DOCTOR answered our call. (Cleveland Clinic has a very real "patient first" philosophy, and is, I'm told, a model that the Obama administration is studying. So far, I'm pretty impressed.) This doctor was actually heading at that moment into surgery with Dr. R (on a Saturday. On July 4th.). He said he would speak to Dr. R & call us back.

10:00 - Dr. D was waiting on another lab to come back before she was going to give us her blessing to be discharged. Matt was feeling pretty good & we were thinking 'this might just happen'. Then they through a curve ball at Matt.

10:15 or so...Dr. D happened to be in the room when the Cleveland doc called us back. Dr. D said, "do you want me to talk to him?" HECK YEAH! So she gets on the phone & there's all this doctor gibbbledy-gobbleldy talk. She gets off the phone & says, "OK. We have a plan. They want us to lance the abscess & you are going to Cleveland. What time is your flight again?" (12- 2 hours) "OK, we're going to get you out of here. But I don't do these things (lancing). I need to call the ER doctor. But we gotta rock and roll, got it?" We got it! I'm pretty sure that's when I hugged her.

The ER doctor was a very attractive red head with apparently nerves of steel. She & her nurse came up (in about 5 minutes) and had Matt writhing in pain in no time. Seriously, it was HORRIBLE. I was out by the nurse's station getting our prescriptions from Dr. D - she called them in herself - spoke directly to the pharmacist & asked very nicely if a rush could be put on them. Did I mention that I love this woman? When I could hear Matt screaming, I looked at her & asked, "is that normal?" she kind of raised an eyebrow at me & said, "they are slicing an infected and extremely painful place off an extremely painful area of his body." I think that was a 'yes'. The ER doc walked out of the room, came over, looked at us & said, "Alrighty. Done." Then she walked down the hall to the elevators, cool as a cucumber. Matt later told me that when Dr. D went back in to the room, she looked at him & said, "was that you in here screaming like a girl?" She's a funny one, that Dr. D.

10:45 - we are leaving the hospital! Head to the pharmacy, get Matt's prescriptions & we are at the airport by 11:15 I think. My mother meets us there with our bags - that she packed for us! Matt's mom is there & ready to go.

12:10 - plane takes off and we are on it. Insane.

Cleveland. Our hotel faces Progressive Field - the home of the Cleveland Indians. It was July 4th...so guess what? FREE FIREWORKS!

Are you really still reading? Wow - I'm impressed.

If you want to see more photos, go to http://mattkellyandkids.shutterfly.com/