Let’s start at the beginning.  On Friday, August 3, 2018, I woke up feeling not very good. I was throwing up and had agonizing abdominal pain. I kept telling my mom I was fine, but I was not fine. I couldn’t stop dry heaving, and the pain was excruciating. My mom took me to the ER because we thought I might have appendicitis. When I got to the ER, they did an abdominal CT scan to check my appendix. My appendix looked okay, but I had an impacted colon, and it was causing intense pain and making me sick. I had been throwing up so much that little capillaries in my throat had burst, so I was throwing up blood. That freaked me out. The nurse had to do an IV to give me fluids, and that is the first IV I have ever had. I was freaked out because I didn’t know what the crap an IV was. They put the IV in my arm. It felt almost like getting a shot, but it wasn’t too bad.  They had to draw my blood in 2 different spots because of some test they had to run. They took blood from my arm and then from the top of my hand. It hurt A LOT! The area in my hand bruised later. To fix the colon issue, I had to drink an entire bottle of Miralax dissolved in two 16 ounce containers of Gatorade. (That is 2 weeks worth of Miralax). It was disgusting. Plugging my nose didn’t help. I tried every different way of drinking it, and none of them helped in any way shape or form. It was just nasty! The Miralax doesn’t have a taste, but it dilutes the flavor of the Gatorade and makes it syrupy. I hate Miralax. It is terrible, and there aren’t enough words to describe how awful it is. I met my new favorite person named Valerie. She is a super great nurse. After I felt better, I was finally allowed to go home. I thought that was the end of the trip, but it was only the beginning of my journey.