ohio - day 1

we made it. weather-wise, it was the perfect day to travel. traffic flowed nicely, there were no vehicle troubles, there were no close-calls, conversation was fun, the music was good, the company was my favorite, the ride was fairly comfortable for me (31 wks pregnant with twins, and all). but there was something... my beloved was sick, and it broke my heart. everything started off just fine, and then somewhere before we hit the rochester area he started feeling some lower back pain and stomach cramping. at first we thought it was a flare-up from when he put his back out a week or so ago while moving some heavy boxes, but it wasn't long before that idea was thrown out. by the time we reached the ohio border the pain had gotten pretty intense. kevin started to lose some of his color and on a scale of 1 to 10 for pain, he had reached an 8. i began to consider stopping at the nearest hospital, but we decided (with a little sisterly help) to try some Advil. shortly after that (with some motherly help) we made another stop to find some charcoal caps, in case it was stomach/intestinal related. finally, he began to feel some relief - enough that he could lay his chair back and rest a bit. up until that point he had been either bent over or curled up on the chair, hugging his legs close to his chest. around 15 minutes from our destination he sat up, and we chatted a bit about where we were going. soon enough our GPS lady alerted us that we were 1 mile from our exit. feeling relieved and thankful to be so close to our final destination, i drove onto the exit ramp. kevin mentioned he was about a 4 on the pain scale now, but was feeling some pressure again. i looked at our GPS display and it read that we were 3 miles from the conference center, and suddenly the next thing i knew kev was vomiting into a p&c bag. i quickly pulled off to the side of the road and ran around to help him. tears welled up in my eyes and i rubbed his back as i prayed and told him how sorry i was that he was sick. we got back on the road, his eyes were puffy, but his color started to come back, and though he was sore it seemed that he was feeling better. we arrived at the conference center, got checked in, unpacked our things, and we rested. we have determined (based on symptoms and timing) that this may well have been a bout of food poisoning. we had prayed through the trip and i know that God was with us - with Kevin, because it could've been much worse. though he didn't get the most sound night of sleep, kevin was up and ready at 8am for his class. he called just a little while ago during his break and said that he ate breakfast and was feeling better!