What a Weekend! May 16, 2009

I went to the Emergency Room on Saturday. It’s not like I’ve never been there before–I’m quite accident prone. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve been to the ER in my 22 years. This Saturday was different, though. I didn’t fall or hurt myself. I was sick. I felt a strong need to puke, but I just couldn’t, for some reason. Also, my abdomen HURT. The pain was very hard to describe, it wasn’t sharp or stabbing or throbbing, it just didn’t feel right. I just felt “sick” inside. This wasn’t an especially new occurrence, I’ve had “episodes” of this happening for months, but I’d just take some Rolaids and it would go away in an hour or so. It didn’t go away on Saturday–it started around 2 and I went to the ER at 6. The doctor asked me a few questions and determined that it was my gallbladder. They started an IV and gave me pain medicine and something for my stomach. After my pain was under control, they brought an ultrasound machine in and looked at my gallbladder–it was FULL of gall stones. I was admitted and was put in a room around 10. Too bad it was the weekend and I didn’t need emergency surgery. I was stuck in the hospital until they could do my surgery on Monday. Sundaycrawled by and I was terrified when they came with a gurney to take me to surgery on Monday morning. It was about an hour and a half sooner than the surgeon had said it would be, so I wasn’t mentally ready. I’d never even been admitted into a hospital before, and the biggest surgery I’d had up to now was having my tonsils removed when I was a junior in high school. I calmed down once I got down to pre-op. Since I have acid reflux they made me swallow some kind of medicine that tasted like grape flavored acid. It was truly disgusting and it was all I could do to keep it down. I was still awake when they rolled me into the operating room and I was surprised that it looks a lot like the OR rooms on Grey’s Anatomy–LOL! Usually they have you count down from 10 or 100, but if they did that this time, I don’t remember…I woke up in the recovery room a few hours later. I was in quite a bit of pain and I felt very nauseated. They gave me some drugs in my IV, but wouldn’t let me drink anything even though I was very thirsty. Since they were able to do the procedure laproscopically, I was able to go home around 5:30 that same day. My pain was pretty severe the first 2 days (I had to take 2 Percocet tablets every 4 hours instead of 1 every 6-8 hours). Twice I even took 3 pills at once. I was out of pills by Thursday morning, but I was still having pain, so I had to go back to the doctor to make sure everything was healing ok since I was still in so much pain. At the doctor, I learned that my surgery had been more involved than the standard procedure. My gallbladder was very infected (and probably only a day or 2 away from rupturing). I was very lucky that they didn’t have to do the traditional 8″ incision, but they did have to do more repair work inside of me than they thought they would. My surgeon said that even though the cuts were tiny on the outside, they went several inches deep and cut through muscle, so that’s why I was still having pain when friends of mine who have had the surgery said that I should be fine by now. Today I just feel like I did about a billion crunches. I’ve had 2 pain pills all day. Last night was the first time I’ve been able to sleep on my sides (I am a side/stomach sleeper), and I have slept most of the day today. My back has been killing me because I have had to sleep on it and I haven’t rested well all week. I have a feeling I’ll be sleeping like the dead for several days now that I can sleep on my side. It still hurts quite a bit to roll over, but it’s worth it to get some sleep. This next part might be TMI, but consider yourself warned–I’m going to talk about poop. I have always pooped a lot. Some days I go as much as 4-6 times. My primary doctor diagnosed me with IBS when I was in 7th grade and I take medicine on and off for it. Well, I am starting to think that all along that has just been my gallbladder not functioning properly. Since my surgery, I have had 3 bowel movements and they have been more “normal” than any I’ve had in years (and possibly ever). I was fully expecting months of diarrhea, but so far that isn’t happening. I’ve always thought that my digestive issues were more than just IBS (really, doctors just say you have IBSwhen they don’t know what else is wrong). I am thrilled with the prospects of being able to eat what I want and not have to run to the bathroom within 5 minutes of finishing my meal (and sometimes before I’m even finished). All in all, the surgery was well worth it, and I’m so glad I let my mom talk me into going to the ER–I wanted to go to minor med first to see if they thought I needed to go to the hospital. Since it’s past midnight now, today is my mom’s birthday, and I always make her cake. I’m glad that I feel well enough to do it (and I’m really glad that her birthday wasn’t last week). She did spend her Mother’s Day in the hospital taking care of me, though. I love my mommy, even though we don’t always get along very well. She has taken care of me all week (she only went back to work today because she had to–she took off Monday through Thursday). I’m not always the best patient, but she hasn’t complained once. She has gall stones too, so I’m sure I’ll get the chance to return the favor sometime this summer.