Time: Monday, 12:30 AM
Place: my bedroom
Me: asleep (for about 5 minutes)
Caitlin: sobbing in agony, claiming severe abdominal pain that cannot possibly be assuaged by massive doses of ibuprofen

Dissolve to suburban hospital emergency room. No gunshot victims, no one dripping blood in the waiting room, no shuddering moans of pain (suburban patients are nothing if not polite).

After 15 minutes of tapping her arms to find the deeply buried veins, a nurse takes blood, attaches IV and gives pain medication. Caitlin is encouraged to pee for a urine test (since she has a bladder the size of a small camel's hump, this is just not happening until the bulk of the IV fluid has dripped into her) and shivers in the chilly room.

45 minutes later the doctor appears and orders a CT scan. One hour later apparently overworked CT technician arrives and wheels Caitlin down the hall for the test. 90 minutes later Caitlin has peed and the test results are back. No appendicitis, no kidney stone, two ovarian cysts and the remnants of one that has already ruptured. There is no predicting when they'll appear or for how long, but they will be invariably painful and can only be treated with heavy duty painkillers.

Despite my whining about how long it took to make the diagnosis and get her treatment, it's pretty amazing that in the space of 5 hours, multiple tests were run, the results were available and all I had to do was give them my insurance information. If we were in a country with socialized medicine, Caitlin would still be waiting to see a doctor.

By 5:30 AM we were home, Caitlin was sufficiently drugged up to sleep, and I tried to remember the last time I had stayed up all night when there was no drinking involved. I failed to recall such a time.