You’ve heard about traditional anniversary gifts. The first anniversary is the paper anniversary. The 25th is silver and 50 is gold. So, what about those in-between anniversaries? Well, for our 33rd anniversary, Spouse surprised me with a visit to the emergency room. I would have settled for Subway and a DVD. 

The back story is that Spouse was having some pain for a couple of days and hadn’t said much about it — until it got past the point of simply annoying. By the time he got around to expressing his actual discomfort he had been running a temp for probably 24 hours. Being the medical expert he is, my suggestion of ibuprofen was nixed so the fever could do its job and fight the infection. The fever never signed up for this. 

Suddenly freezing, Spouse dragged himself to bed for a nap and warmed up with my heating pad, the likes of which he will never again ridicule. A couple of hours later he woke up saying he felt decent enough to eat a little. It was when he went to bed for the night that the real trouble started.

After tossing and turning for almost two hours the pain was too fierce to fight. At that point I was pulling clothes on and directing him to do the same. We would be heading to the emergency room. The fact that he didn’t argue with me was not a good sign. 

It was right before leaving the house and just after midnight when my partner of 33 years gave me a kiss and winced, “Happy anniversary.”

Within the 10 minutes it took to get to the hospital, Spouse wasn’t doubling over quite as much. As a nurse asked him questions he seemed to be sitting up a little straighter, and when it came to measuring the pain on a scale of one to 10 he announced that it felt like only a one or two. He sounded almost uncomfortable with having made the trip but we weren’t going anywhere without some answers.

Once in the examining area he was hooked up to an I.V., had blood taken, and was whisked away for a CT scan. By this time it was around four in the morning and we were both exhausted … and only one of us had a bed. Spouse nodded off briefly while I flipped television stations until I found “I Love Lucy” episodes. 

The attending doctor came in and announced that he had some bad news — my mate had a ruptured appendix. Ironically, the relief Spouse suddenly felt from release of the pressure once the appendix ruptured may or may not have been caused by the heating pad, which he had heated up enough to almost toast himself. 

By six a.m. he was being rolled into surgery. On the upside, the procedure was successful and none of that nastiness made its way into other areas of his body — somehow it managed to stay in a sort of pocket the surgeon could easily work with and clear. 

Later that morning I sat next to a groggy Spouse, thankful beyond words for how things happened. We both knew that if the pain had subsided while we were still at home, it’s very possible my husband would have gone back to sleep and planned on going to work the next day. The end result, as unfunny as this sounds, could have been just that — the end. 

There were, as always, little things to laugh about along this adventure. For instance, I kid you not when I say the phlebotomist in the ER had an accent reminiscent of Dracula when she entered the room with, “I’ve come to take your blood.” 

We’ve had plenty of jokes about how thoughtless it was that he didn’t have an anniversary card for me in the ER, and how there are easier ways to get out of going to dinner. But through all those jokes we know we were the lucky ones. 

And I didn’t even mind getting an anniversary card a few days late.