Day 2- Learning to roll with the punches

Day 2 of our camper adventure!

We woke up several times during the early morning hours. Not because we were trying to be awake, but because a cardinal kept thumping into our window! (darn nature! :P) We were making some coffee and contemplating breakfast. Some of you know this, but Scott has been pretty sick for the past couple weeks. He actually went to get a chest X-ray this past week for some residual pain he has been having in his ribs. The doctors found nothing, and essentially he was told it would go away on its own and to keep taking Advil.

The doctors couldn’t be more wrong .

Scott coughed a few times, and went down to the ground. He couldn’t stand, could barely breath, and was in a ton of pain. I’ll be the first to admit that I thought he was trying to be funny, until I realized he wasn’t. I helped him try to get up and get him to the bed to sit down. Ten minutes later, we were in the truck and off to the Emergency Room. They conducted some blood work and eventually a CT scan of his chest, which revealed he has PNEUMONIA. The doctor did say it looked like most of it was cleared up, but his left lung still has a lot of gross stuff in there. The doctor gave him a major antibiotic, a hardcore pain killer, and his inhaler to help him breath better. We were relieved that it wasn’t a blood clot or worse like the doctor had thought.

Side note- we would like to give a MAJOR shout out to Javon Bea Hospital in Rockford, Illinois. They made Scott feel comfortable and listened to, which he had not felt back home. Dr. Castro and nurse Taylor were awesome! Scott did like to throw the radiologist under the bus, saying she was “mean” to him (she didn’t laugh at his jokes…but he’s really not that funny!) This did give us a few laughs as we tried to make the best of the bad situation #kathy

Scott was a rockstar, and even humored me when I wanted to take his picture for the blog 🙂

We got his prescriptions filled, and rushed back to the campsite to pack up. We still had an 8 hour drive ahead of us to get to Sioux Falls, SD. With Scott down for the count, I had to try my hand at his usual jobs with getting the camper prepared for travel. This included hooking chains up and raising/lowering the camper and all these things that I’ve seen Scott do, but have no idea what they are called.

We got packed up pretty quickly, and made our way to Sioux Falls. Long story short, the long trip was hard on both of us. Scott’s medicine made him unable to drive, which meant the driving was all up to me. I-90 in Minnesota was zone after zone of construction, I was tired and cranky from the long and stressful day, and we both just wanted to be stopped and settled for the night.

The coolest part of this journey to Sioux Falls was when we crossed the Mississippi River. Scott has done this part of our trip before with his family, but I never have. It was wild to see such a large river!

We finally got to the KOA in Sioux Falls. We were pretty disappointed in the KOA, as it was sandwiched between the highway (where the speed limit is 80 mph in SD!) and a trucking company. There was constant noise from vehicles all night. Not to mention we also were placed at a campsite where our only view was the trucking company, a huge RV, and a trailer home with a front loader sitting in front of it. We wouldn’t recommend staying here to anyone unless there is literally nowhere else to camp. We were glad to only be staying one night at this KOA.