Oh, Happy Day

This post is navel-gazing at its worst. It really would be more appropriate as a journal entry than as a blog post, but it makes me so very happy that I thought I'd share.


Today is a very special day for me. One year ago today, I had my gallbladder removed. If you're a regular reader, you already know that I take a dim view of surgery. It should be the last resort. For my gallbladder, it was! I was sick for two years, and the last three months of that time were pure hell. Gallstones can cause an impressive amount of pain.

When I finally got an appointment to see a gastroenterologist, I had a battery of tests, saw the surgeon, and was in the OR exactly one week after that appointment. I can't be too disgusted with the gastro, since he correctly diagnosed me, but you'd think someone who specialized in the digestive system would be able to tell that he himself suffered from having a big splintery board lodged in his rectum. Oh well.

The surgeon (Dr. Gallbladder) and the surgical resident both had an amazing bedside manner. I was quite suspicious-since when do surgeons know how to behave like humans? My poor little gallbladder was so full of stones that it could no longer function. Dr. Gallbladder said all it was doing was spitting out stones and causing me pain.

Not to brag, but MY gallbladder had way more stones than this one!

I was in enough pain that I didn't care about details, I wanted it OUT. If it was the thing causing those attacks that dropped me to my knees, then I wanted it gone. I'd been diagnosed with nothing but acid reflux before this. Lucky for me, there have been some advances in medicine, and I got to have a laparoscopic surgery instead of the traditional open procedure.

It's a diagram, but it's still gross if you don't care for medical procedures.

The laparoscopic procedure causes significantly less pain, and you get to leave the hospital either the same day, or the next day. However, sometimes they find that they can't do the laparoscopy, and convert to the open. I was terrified this would happen. I woke up in recovery with a nurse screaming my name at me (how rude!). All I wanted to know was if they'd had to convert to the open procedure. He said no, and I was so very happy! They seem so surprised when you want to get out of the hospital as fast as you can.

My surgery started at approximately 3pm, and even though I took a long time to wake up, I was home a little before 10pm. J ran to the pharmacy to get a prescription filled for me, and I sat propped up in my bed, grinning. In spite of the anesthesia that was still making me loopy, in spite of the pain meds, and in spite of the fact that its "home" was right next to an incision, I could tell that the fierce little ball of pain in my torso was gone. Want to know how that made me feel?

For those of you who read Monday Bunny Blogging, you'll be *shocked* to know that the one time Bumble truly showed empathy for me was the morning of my surgery. I was trying to get dressed to go to the hospital, and I guess I was giving off a lot of pain and fear, and it got to him. So he pressed himself up against my foot, and I couldn't get my socks and shoes on because he stuck to me like glue. J had to intervene. When I got home that evening, he was back to his demanding self.