Jo woke up at 6.30 this morning, crying in pain from what I first thought was a headache.

She suffers from the occasional migraine, but this was significantly worse than anything I have seen her experience. She, herself, admitted that giving birth without any pain-killers was nothing compared to this particular pain (!).

Luckily, Jo’s mum was at hand to call an ambulance (a more normal occurence when living in the countryside, one-hundred kilometres from the nearest hospital) and after an hour’s speed-ride, we got to spend seven hours in a room with Jo constantly in pain.

These five-hundred minutes of nothingness (for Inger, Freya and me, that is) were interspersed with doctors’ and nurses’ visits, giving Jo morphine, taking her away for various x-rays and scans, and, as Freya and I got to see, taking brain fluid from near Jo’s spine.

Freya, as usual, seemed in her element, just thankful, I suppose, to be in Mum’s, Dad’s and mormor’s presence. I went to the local toy-shop after about five hours (not knowing how long we would be there) and bought her a toy doctor’s kit, and a 4cm tall Barbapapa.

Jo was given a clean bill of health at around 7pm (no tumour or hemorrhaging). It is possible, the doctor said, that this was a particularly unusual form of migraine, coupled with a cramp-induced headache. Whatever it was, I just hope it is as frequent as it is unusual.