bad idea considering how sick I was, and how the gastroenterologist ran blood tests and scheduled me for an ultrasound the next morning, and how the gastroenterologist told me that afternoon that my blood work seemed fine and nothing seemed amiss on the ultrasound so he was giving me the okay to travel. But if I was still having issues upon my return, he would have to perform an endoscopy and a colonoscopy.
I remember us driving to the Hudson River Valley that evening to hunt for our future weekend home and battling through the discomfort all through that weekend as the severe constipation really set in. I remember getting on the plane to Los Angeles the following Tuesday, July 2, in a zombielike state and somehow making it through that flight with two young children and then the awful midafternoon traffic to get to my parents’ house in Monterey Park (a predominantly Chinese suburb east of Los Angeles) and then eating my dad’s marinated ribs (one of my favorite dishes) even though I hadn’t pooped normally in who knew how long and lying in bed afterward, exhausted and in pain. I remember my mother coming home from work that night and being horrified at how pale I was—“green,” she said in Vietnamese—and at how thin I had gotten in the less than two months since she’d last seen me; I wondered later whether mothers have a sixth sense about their children. I remember…I remember…
The next day, Wednesday, July 3, Josh and I went to the Staples in the next town over to fax some papers to our Realtor—we had bid on a house, had accepted the seller’s counteroffer, and were about to sign the contract. While Josh was trying to figure out how to work the fax machine, I asked a cashier for a plastic bag, found a corner where I hoped no one would see me, and threw up a warm, yellowish-brown substance into the bag. By evening, I was vomiting water. I called the doctors in New York covering for my internist and gastroenterologist (it was a holiday weekend, after all); they both told me to go to the ER. Josh drove me to Garfield Medical Center, a few blocks from my parents’ house, where I found a bunch of elderly Chinese people waiting to be seen. “I’m not going to wait,” I told Josh, “it will go away,” and we went for a walk around the block instead, hoping that that would make this bout ease. I wanted to hold on until I returned to New York, in less than a week. I should have waited that night, but maybe a part of me knew that if I checked in to the ER, I wouldn’t be leaving for a while, and I didn’t want to miss the big family reunion that was going to happen at my brother’s house the next day.
On the Fourth of July, we all congregated at my brother’s Mediterranean-style house in the hills of Palos Verdes Estates, where you can see the Pacific Ocean from the backyard. I was gratified to see my girls play in the inflatable pool and run around with their first and second cousins. It was what I had wanted. I was so happy to see my parents, siblings, cousins, and uncles and aunts all together, laughing and talking in the many languages that I grew up with. For the briefest of moments, I could relive the most joyous parts of my childhood.
By 4:00 A.M. on the day of the wedding, I couldn’t take it anymore. I woke up my seventy-year-old father and asked him to drive me to the hospital. I didn’t wake Josh because I wanted to spare him whatever this was for a little longer, so he could have a few more hours of sleep; I intuitively knew he would need all the sleep he could get to deal with whatever awaited us that day and in the days to come.
There was no one in the ER at Garfield Medical Center this time, which was fortunate because I was in so much pain I couldn’t even sit up straight when the triage nurse assessed my condition and admitted me. I’ll never forget my incredible relief when the morphine hit my system; I could understand why people would rob and kill for narcotics. The ER attending told me that he’d seen what appeared to be an obstruction on my CT scan so he was going