Saturday was my 7th birthday!

Ok- not really. But Saturday, October 24th, was a pretty big day for me. Seven years ago, it fell on a Thursday. Let's look at the time line of that week.

Wednesday, I woke up feeling pretty crappy. I thought I had one of those 24 hour bugs that was going around and that I'd slept wrong because I woke up with a pain on the right side of my back. I called in sick to work and crawled back into bed with my heating pad. That night, I was hosting Bible study at my house. The girls came over, I stayed in bed.

The next morning, Thursday the 24th, I woke up still feeling bad and with back pain. I called in sick to work again. Mom called to check on me later in the day. She asked me to take my temperature, which I did to placate her. In went the thermometer. That didn't seem right. I'll take it again. Huh, 104 degrees. That seems awfully high. I called Mom to let her know and she immediately freaked out. She told me to get dressed so she could take me to the ER. We arrived at the ER (let's not even discuss the fact that I was almost insurance-less because I didn't want to have to pay for Cobra because I wasn't considered a full-time employee yet and therefore didn't have health insurance). I was absolutely freezing cold by that point. Eventually, the nurses took me back into a room. They would only give me one blanket. They took my temperature again. This time, it was 106 degrees. They took my blood pressure. It was so low, I should've been dead. I remember watching the nurses freak out and rush out the door to find a doctor. I remember thinking it will all be fine. I'll be fine. Of course, the next thing I know, I wake up in a room in the IICU. I have tubes in my arms and attached to my chest. But guess what, I woke up.

The next day was Friday, October 25, bar result day. I lay there in my hospital bed all day. At four o'clock, bar results are posted on the Internet. Guess who didn't have access to a computer. And guess who sure as hell wasn't going to wait until Monday to get my results in the mail. Yep- this girl. So I called the Supreme Court.
Hi, lady at the Supreme Court. I was just curious if I could get my bar results from you.

Um, we don't give those out over the phone. You can either check the website or you can wait for your letter to arrive.

Ma'am, those aren't options for me. I am currently lying in a hospital bed in the IICU. I can't check the website and I can't wait until Monday. I nearly died yesterday. I HAVE to know if I am a lawyer.

Fine- I can check for you. Do you remember your bar examination number?

Did I ever?! That crap was emblazoned on my brain for months. I told her my number. In the most annoyed voice I've ever heard, I hear this:

Congratulations. You passed. Click.

Oh my god- I passed the Bar!! I started crying and then I heard the nurses next door calling out their congratulations. They saw my heart rate spike on the monitor and knew I had passed. My nurse came in to celebrate with some bubbly (ie ginger-ale). Later that night, I ended up having chest pains and had to go on oxygen.

Eventually, after stripping some veins and having quite a few CAT scans (cherry flavored barium made me throw up), they finally figured out what was wrong with me. Staph infection in my kidney. As my doctor told me, my kidney would no longer have a career in photographs. It is apparently quite pock-marked and scarred. But I am alive. And I am an attorney.