So I had a gastritis attack end of Jan into Feb. 14 days of Prilosec and invalid food. Done.
Then on Mar 8th at night I had what I thought were the beginnings of another gastritis attack, same pain just not as bad...
- which led me to think of nipping it in the bud myself, so I started a home treatment of Prilosec and invalid food remembering how well it worked last time,
- which ended up not working because all hell broke loose Sunday night into Monday pain-wise,
- which led me to go to the doctor on Wed the 16th to be poked and prodded,
- which led to an ultrasound on the 17th where I got to see my kidneys, liver, spleen, bottom of my heart, aortic artery, bile duct, and gall bladder with two stones,
- which led to being told that I needed further testing because not only did the ultrasound find a possible gallstone in the neck of my gall bladder which was "very inflamed", they also found a "shadow" on my liver,
- which meant a surgical consult was scheduled on the 21st (Mon) for the gall bladder issue and an MRI was scheduled on the 18th (Fri) to determine the nature of the "shadow",
- which meant I had to wait the weekend to find out the MRI results,
- which meant a very rocky start to my weekend as the pain was VERY bad,
- which led to me calling the on-call doctor Saturday who gave me the max doses of Aleve/Tylenol I could take in a 24hr period,
- which helped immensely as I was being "too cautious" and was then able to work out a pain med regimen and stop thinking of taking myself to the ER,
- which led to finding out Monday that the "shadow" on my liver is benign and something I was born with so no worries,
- which meant I was then off to my surgical consult to learn all about what's going on, worst and best case scenarios, surgical procedures, etc, and that they couldn't get me into surgery until Thurs 24th as gall bladder surgeries are only held on Mon/Thurs and I told them if I had to wait until Mon I was going to start crying,
- which led to meeting with the pre-op nurse to be further educated about the surgical procedures, detailed instructions of what I had to do the night before and morning of the surgery,
- which then led to having pre-op bloodwork,
- which meant waiting until Thursday for my surgery,
- which came faster than I thought,
- which meant I was thoroughly tweaked all during the pre-op waiting time answering redundant questions, forgetting the plethora of people's names, getting hooked up to the IV, waiting, waiting, waiting,
- which ended and I was wheeled off to the OR where apparently I was all loopy from the "happy juice" and introduced the surgeon to MrL "in absentia" (the surgeon told me this afterward, I have absolutely no memory of this),
- which led to me waking up in the recovery room where the nurse told me that I still had my gall bladder and that the doctor had explained this all to me after the surgery
- which I did not remember,
- which led to my first reaction of "are you fucking serious?" but because the hospital is Adventist and prayer-positive, I managed to not say that out loud and just croak out "I'm sorry, I'm confused, I still have my gall bladder?" to
- which the nurse replied yes and that the doctor would explain it all to me again once I was back in the ACU,
- which meant waiting and waiting again while sipping water and eating applesauce and Jell-O while my father and MrL waited with me,
- which led to the doctor finally coming in and telling me that my gall bladder had been very sick for a long time, connective tissue has built up around it, and he didn't feel confident in doing it by himself lapriscopically so he was referring me to another doctor so both of them could do it together lapriscopically and if they were unable to be the dynamic duo, they would end up having to cut me open,
- which made me upset to say the least.
And so I have to go to another surgical consult next week and find out when they can schedule me for the dynamic duo surgery.
How's that for Murphy's Law? I had a feeling this wasn't going to be easy but everyone was telling me that I was going to be fine, the surgery would be fine, and everything was going to be just fine, so I just told myself to stop being pessimistic but that little voice wouldn't go away. Guess I was right...
Golden side of the coin at least it's not life threatening, just a pain in the ass and I made it through my first surgery even if it wasn't finished.
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