This is long, but I swear I'm not flipping you off,

Friday night I went to the Cheesecake Factory with my mom, Ed, Lucas and Lara. We each had a turkey burger and then went home. I got home around 9:30m since it was dark outside I didn't want Louis to escape, I opened the front door and tried to get in without letting him escape. So I snuck in really and quickly slammed the front door. Louis did not escape ...My finger was not so lucky.

I slammed my middle, right-hand finger in the front door. After the initial impact, my first instinct was to pull my finger up towards my face and grab it with my other hand. With that, blood went flying across my face and all across the walls ... I ran to the bathroom to rinse it off and saw the blood on m face and began to panic. Did I mention the blood?

I got a towel to try and stop the bleeding, but it just kept coming! I became even more scared and decided I needed Greggie to come home ... I didn't want to let go of my finger so I dialed the phone number really quickly and then put the phone on my shoulder to hold it in place and waited for Greg to answer. Unfortunately, Greg was at a bar with a friend and it was loud and he couldn't really understand me ... this is what he said I sounded like, but I think he's wrong ... http://www.killerclips.com/greeting.php?mqg=25205.

I remember saying "The baby is okay, but I slammed my finger in the door and you need to come home." He apparently doesn't remember it the same way.

When he got home I was lying on the floor holding my finger ... he saw the blood all over the house and couldn't really understand what I was saying. Once I calmed down a bit he and Ryan took me to the ER.

The ER is a disgusting place. Everyone looks sick and miserable and you don't want to touch anything. When we first arrived the woman at the check-in station said it wasn't going to be very long ... she was very wrong!

After about 1 -2 hours of waiting I started cramping. Because I'm pregnant that means that you have to go labor and delivery. I was calm at this point, in fact I had calmed down a great deal and in my mind I knew everything was fine ... however, as we walked the long halls, following the signs to "maternity" I started becoming increasingly more nervous. The halls were lined with pictures of babies and healthy families and I started getting very scared. That was when I wanted my mom. What if something bad was happening? What if I had to delivery BHR, he's only a cauliflower?

I hope BHR needs me as much as I need my mom. Not that Greg wasn't helpful or supportive, because I couldn't have done it without him there either, but there's definitely something different about having my mom there. Having both of them in the room with me helped me feel better, or made me feel like I would be okay.

They put us in a room to monitor the baby and make sure I wasn't having contractions. Theyu strapped some belts across my belly and Greg and I listened to BHR's little heart-beat. I start feeling a little more calm and then I heard "Ayeyaiyai" (not sure how to spell that out) ... there was a woman behind the curtain who was actually in labor and she was in pain! It didn't matter that she didn't speak english, all I heard was pain!

I kept saying to Greg "I'm not ready for this, do you hear that lady?" I was so NOT going into labor! I had to be okay ... My finger was still oozing and my stomach was still cramping. Everytime the woman next to me let out a "yelp" I told myself I was okay.

Eventually they let me leave labor and delivery. I was okay and so was BHR, but my finger was still oozing. They plopped me in a wheel chair and dropped me off back in the ER. I had hoped that the site of a pregnant woman in a wheel chair would get me into see the doctor sooner, but unfortunately that was not the case.

My mom raided the vending machines and Greg kept giving me water from my hospital sippy straw and we waited ...

Eventually, probably around 2:30 or 3:00am we got into see the Doctor. He told me that they were going to have to take the nail off my finger, it was already pretty destroyed, and then clean up the nail bed and the sew the nail back on. I had to have x-rays and he would be back to take care of everything else ... with that I started feeling really nauseous, I got up to run to the bathroom. I knocked on the door, opened the door, saw the toilet and barfed all over the bathroom! I guess that explains the cramps.

My mom then came in and tried to hold my hair back for me ... I couldn't stop throwing up and there was turkey burger everywhere! I'm not entirely sure what was so funny, but my mom couldn't stop laughing. I begged her to make the barfing stop, but that only fueled her laughter. I couldn't bend over very well because of the baby, so I just sort of hung over the toilet until the barfing stopped. I had puke everywhere ... it was like I sprayed down the bathroom with a vomit hose. It was disgusting,

My bed was right across from the bathroom and everytime someone walked over to use it I would see them open the door and then close it quite quickly. I hung my head in shame and muttered "sorry."

The Doctor eventually came back and I had to have two shots of numbing medicine in my finger and 10 or 11 stitches on my nail bed and 3 more to hold the nail in place. The numbing medicine began to fade towards the end and I thought I was going to pass out from the pain. Greg held my hand the entire time and didn't get sick once. The doctor's kept offering him a chair, in fact they encouraged him to sit down in case he got squeemish and fainted, but he didn't need it. Maybe he was preparing for September when everything gets a bit more real and bit more gross?

They finished sewing me up and gave me some pain meds and a prescription. The three of us headed out of the ER as if we had just been in battle ... I was wearing two hospital gounds, beige socks, a big white bandage and barf. We stopped by Walgreens at 4:00am to pick up the pain meds and my mom dropped us off at the scene of the crime, still splattered with blood. I'm pretty sure I could not have made it through this without Greg or my mom. It was a practice round, on a much smaller scale, for what it's going to be like in September. I'm hoping I'll be much more prepared by then.

What makes it all worse is that I have a final exam this evening. As if law school wasn't bad enough, right? It consists of 50 multiple choice questions all of which I have to bubble in on a scantron. Not sure how that's going to happen since I can barely do anything with my right hand, but I'm sure I'll make it work. I'm not asking for miracles, this is law school and McGeorge for cryin' out loud, I just want to pass.

So, if you see me out and about and it looks like I'm flipping you off, I'm not, it's just a giant band- aid reminding me that whenever things seem challenging, there's always something worse that can happen.