Life Is Good (Part 2)

So on Tuesday at noon, my lovely antagonistic gallbladder was removed from my body. Full of stones and infected, the little bugger.

Guess I can now check “get stitches” off my bucket list.

I went straight from the doctors office to the same day surgery center at the hospital on Tuesday and thankfully, both the doctor office AND the same day surgery center have much more comfortable waiting rooms than the ER. And even more thankfully, I didn’t need to spend as much time in either one of them. I think the amount of time between being seen in the doctor’s office and coming out of surgery minus a gallbladder was about equal to the amount of time we spent in the ER on Sunday morning. I don’t care now though, I’m just glad I don’t hurt now like I was hurting on Sunday morning.

When I checked into same day surgery, they put me right in a room and prepped me for surgery (prepped as in: made me wear a terribly unfashionable yard of fabric with strings that let in WAYYY too much air in the back end, and gave me a nice IV which was probably one of the most painful parts of the whole thing…she was great at putting it in, but I just am not on friendly terms with things that poke me).

So I made sure that the anesthesiologist was aware that I’m a lightweight and my body might get too relaxed and want to stop breathing but I would very much like to make sure I wake up at the end of the surgery. He made a note and said not to worry, he’d make sure of it, and they really liked to have all of their patients wake up at the end. LOL. The note was probably just for my reassurance, but it worked. LOL.

It finally got to noon and they rolled me back. He said he was going to give me a little test shot of anesthesia in my IV while we were going down the hall. About 2 minutes later my blinks resembled something more like 30 second cat naps. Like I said, lightweight. I remember rolling into the OR and thinking…hmmm…this doesn’t really look like Grey’s Anatomy. LOL. Then they asked me to slide over onto the table and I bobbled my way over like a little drunk lady. They put my arm out to the side and then I was waking up in the recovery room. Only, I didn’t really know it was the recovery room and I wasn’t really awake. I was just rolling around in the bed trying to get away from this awful pain in my stomach. They got the pain under control and FINALLY I was able to get some ice chips for the awful dry mouth. Those were the best ice chips ever. Then they took me back to a room where I could get real clothes on again, and off I went.

Okay, it wasn’t that simple. I had to sign a bunch of papers, I had to move at the speed of molasses in Alaska to get dressed, and then I got a lovely wheelchair ride to the door.

But I finally got home. Everything was good…except for all the gas. HOLY cow! That part hurt almost as much as the gallstones.

But even that went away by today. Today was much better. Except for the part where I took a shower and almost passed out because I looked at my stitches. Wooh.

I’m slowly feeling better. I can’t wait for the soreness to go away so I can get back to doing stuff. Being sick is not for me. LOL. It has been SO nice how everyone has jumped in to take care of me though…I feel VERY loved. People have brought in food, treats, flowers, and dropped by to visit or stay with me. I’ve gotten a ton of texts and emails and facebook messages and phone calls…it’s been amazing. I’ve been told to enjoy the rest. I’m trying. It’s so hard when I’m so used to DOING. Being busy. Not sitting in a chair all day. LOL. So I’ve colored a few pages, slept a LOT, read a book brought to me by a lovely friend, nibbled at some food, and that’s pretty much it. Very UN-busy…but I’m still so tired.

But life is still good and it’s getting better. I’m just glad that little bugger is out and I’m on the recovery side. Whew. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel and I think this is one that’s safe to go to…lol. 

Life Is Good

Even though I’ve been horrible at blogging it. LOL. So, since last post over a month ago, I’ve worked on the house, worked on photographing events and people, decided to homeschool our kids next year, taken a continuing education class on InDesign, read a few books, cooked a few meals, proctored end of grade testing at three different middle schools, and generally stayed extremely busy. Looking at my calendar just makes me a little dizzy.

Or maybe that’s the medication. Oh. Did I mention that yesterday, after like 8 years of mostly peaceful co-existence with my gallstones, they decided to stop the cease-fire and attack with a vengeance? They did. Woke me up at 1am and sent me to the bathroom puking. I thought it was just really bad heartburn at first, but the antacids didn’t even touch the pain. After about the third episode of getting way too friendly with the porcelain throne, I decided it might be a good idea to just go on to the ER. (Okay, it wasn’t exactly decided on my own, KC was pretty insistent, because we were both pretty sure it was those dratted gallstones acting up.)

And after I quit Dr. Pepper completely, too! SMH

Anywho, we got to the ER around 4am. After sitting in the miserably uncomfortable ER waiting room for 2.5 hours, during which I was forced into becoming uncomfortably and intimately acquainted with THEIR porcelain throne, and was reduced to silent tears at least twice, we were finally taken back to a room.

The doctor said it looked like my gallbladder and they would do an ultrasound to see what was happening. Then they ran the typical rounds of tests, and put an IV in my wrist for meds. Kudos to the nurses for hitting my poor dehydrated veins on the first try without having to dig around to find them. That’s happened to me before when I WAS hydrated prior to the sticks. Fun times.

Then they gave me some meds. Funner times. One for nausea…yay…no more hugging up on strange toilets! After that one, came an antibiotic and a pain-killer. I remember very little after that. I remember hearing voices talking, someone telling me to breathe, people saying I was sleeping (in which I wanted to say,no, I’m not, I can still hear you!…although I have no idea what else they said, just that they were talking a lot, so maybe I WAS sleeping), then I opened my eyes and KC wasn’t sitting beside me anymore and I had no idea how I got there, when I opened my eyes again, some nurse said she was going to do the ultrasound, then she told me to breathe a couple of times, then I opened my eyes and KC was next to me again and he was laughing.

Anyway, another day has passed since I started this post. It takes me multiple days to blog now…I have to pause for nap breaks every five minutes.

I never did find out what KC was laughing at when I woke up in the ER in my last paragraph. He says he didn’t take embarrassing pictures but we’ll see. LOL. The nurse or doc or somebody came back in right as I was trying to wake up enough to find out what was so funny, and they were telling me that apparently, me being such a lightweight when it comes to pain meds, I went out super fast and relaxed so much that I stopped breathing and my oxygen dropped. Woops. And that explained why I woke up with the oxygen on my face and why people kept squeezing my feet and telling me to breathe.

So anyway, they wouldn’t do anything Sunday because it was Sunday. They said to call first thing on Monday morning, so we did. They first said I could come in for an appointment on Thursday morning to see if I needed surgery. I was like whoa there…I am stuck in zombie land because if I don’t take the pain meds it hurts like the devil, and I can’t be stuck in zombie land until THURSDAY just to be seen, much less waiting even longer for the surgery. Of course, I said it nicely. But anyway, they called back a few minutes later and said, Tuesday morning you’ll see the doc. Much better! Then this morning the doc checked me out and said we could do it anytime in the next couple of days. Naturally, KC and I were both like…today? We didn’t really think he’d say okay, but he did.

Anyways, I’ll have to come back again later. Meds are zombify-ing me again and I can’t think clearly.

Life is good!