Fucker, at least they don’t leave me to cool my heels for over an hour without bothering to let me know they’re running late. So he started looking at my blood test results, came upon my bilirubin levels, and all came to a screeching halt as I explained to him what had been happening. “You had the ultrasound, and what were the results?” he asked. “It indicated possible gallstones,” I said, then went on to explain that I was scheduled for an MRCE the next morning. “But… an MRCE isn’t even on the decision tree at this point,” he said, confused. “If you have gallstones, your gallbladder needs to come out.” And he sent his nurse out to get a sheet of paper so he could point to a diagram of my gallbladder and my liver and where stones might and mightn’t be, and toss around sentences like “which could cause pancreatitis, which could be life-threatening”. “So… what’s the next step?” I said. “I need to see a copy of your ultrasound results,” he said. “And then I’d like to take your gallbladder out as soon as possible.” He said, several times, “It’s a good thing you didn’t leave!” And in the end, I had to fill out and sign a form for the other doctor’s office to fax over the ultrasound results, then went and got something to eat because I was STARVING, and then cooled my heels in the waiting room until 5:00 (thank god I had the foresight to bring a book to read), until the other office got the results faxed over, my surgeon reviewed them, and then his nurse scheduled my surgery for first thing the next morning. She handed over an information sheet about the surgery, told me not to eat or drink anything after midnight, told me to be at the hospital at 5:30, and gave me a prescription for perc0set. I met Fred and the spud at a Mexican restaurant for dinner, but I ended up not eating much – guess I wasn’t that hungry – and then Fred and I went home and the spud went to her friend’s house. Wednesday morning I got up bright and early so I could shower and blow-dry my hair before we left. Fred got up a few minutes after I did, and we left the house a few minutes after 5. We actually had to wait a few minutes until they opened the part of the outpatient procedures section where they check you in and take your copay and all that, but I was lucky enough to be the second one there, because while I was back answering the clerk’s questions (she also had weight loss surgery, performed by my surgeon. I wanted to ask her if she thought his bedside manner was lacking a little, but I was afraid she’d be all “No, he was wonderful!” and then tell on me.) ten million people filled up the lobby. I’d been told the night before that my surgery was scheduled to start at 7, but when we were still sitting in the lobby at 6:40, I said to Fred, “I think my surgery’s going to be starting a little late.” Not much more than a few minutes later, I was paged back to the preop area, and in no time flat I was stylin’ in the hospital johnny, the stockings that prevent… blood clots? Maybe?.. and a brand-spankin-new inserted-the-first-time IV. They brought Fred back to keep me company, and then the anesthesiologist came in and asked me all the 10,000 questions the preop nurse had already asked me, and then the nurse-anesthesiologist (who was cuuuuuuute) came in and asked them all over again. When I told the anesthesiologist that I always get very nauseous when coming out from under general anesthesia, he told me they’d put something in the IV to prevent nausea. But when I told the nurse-anesthesiologist the same thing, he told me they’d not only put something in the IV, they’d give me a patch behind my ear. They actually put the patch on before they took me to the operating room. Long before we expected it – I think it was about 7:15 or so – the nurse-anesthesiologist put something in the IV to relax me and they were wheeling me back to the operating room. Next thing I knew, I was coming to as they were wheeling me to recovery. Then I was in and out, and they were talking over me about how low my heart-rate was, and I don’t know if they addressed any questions to me, but I spoke up and said “I’m on Metoprol0l for heart palpitations”, and that seemed to solve the confusion. They asked if I was in pain, and I very much was, so they told me they’d give me a half dose of morphine, but they couldn’t give me too much or my heart rate would drop too low. After a while I woke up enough to see that a patient across the way was coming out from under anesthesia in a pretty violent way, and nurses were surrounding him and telling him to stop trying to pull the oxygen mask off, that it was over and he was okay, and I briefly wished that I had my glasses so I could see exactly what was going on, and then I was asleep again. Some time later they wheeled me into a postop room and the nurse took the inflatable baggy things off my legs, brought me some apple juice, and – at my request – walked me to the bathroom. When they pulled the catheter out in recovery, it immediately made me feel like I had to pee, and guess what? I did! Only a little bit, though, so it was decided that I was going to have to produce more urine than that before they’d let me leave. They brought Fred back, and he showed me the picture they’d taken of my liver, and I was out of it enough that when he said “This is the color your liver should be, and this is the color it actually is”, I thought he was showing me two side-by-side pictures of livers, one mine and one a normal one, and I looked back and forth, confused, because they looked like they were the same color to me. What he was actually showing me was that my liver should have been the healthy pink of my intestines, but it’s a dark gray, and they took two pictures of my liver to show that, and also did a biopsy of my liver (which my GI will be following up on). Go look at my liver, here. You KNOW you wanna see it. So I snoozed and sipped apple juice while Fred watched TV and did some Su Doku puzzles. We actually happened to catch the woman who runs Tigers for Tomorrow on the news, too. What are the chances? Sometime after 1:00 my surgeon stopped by to check on me and to tell me he’d talked to my GI, and that I needed to see him (the surgeon) and the GI late the next week (this week) for follow-up appointments, but if there was any scheduling conflict and I had to choose whether to see the surgeon or the GI, I needed to see the GI. My surgeon had already told Fred that my gray liver could be anything from too much iron to a blocked bile duct to something more serious, like liver disease. He also said that it could be transitory and might go away on its own – but it’ll be up to the GI to figure all that out. A while later, the nurse took me to the bathroom again, where I peed more than I had before, and she announced that I could go home. I got dressed in short order, she filled out the discharge papers, and Fred and I were on our way home. We stopped at the grocery store on the way home so Fred could pick up my perc0set prescription (and he had to come back out to the car to get my social security number before they’d release it to me) along with some canned chicken noodle soup. When we got home he ate lunch and I had a bowl of soup that SUCKED, made some phone calls, and then snoozed on the couch for the better part of the afternoon. I actually slept okay Wednesday night, because I was able to sleep on my right side. I did have to keep waking up to fend off the cats, who apparently wanted nothing more in this world than to tromp all over my stomach. I told Fred he might as well go to work on Thursday, because I was able to move around well enough that there was no reason for him to stay home. He woke me up when he left, kissed me goodbye, and I went back to sleep for a few hours. I was awakened by Sugarbutt, who was trying to climb on my stomach, and I yelled and flung him off me, and didn’t see him again for several hours. Poor Sugarbutt. I got up mid-morning, took a shower, put my nightgown back on and a sweatshirt over that, then spent the rest of the morning reading and snoozing in the recliner in the corner of the bedroom. Thursday was, by far, worse than Wednesday. I was hurting, it hurt to sit too long, it hurt to get up from sitting, I couldn’t lay down for long, and the perc0set was just making me dopey, not really doing anything about the pain. And the worst pain, far and away, was the pain in my right shoulder. I’ve done some looking online, and apparently when they do a liver biopsy, the pain refers to your shoulder for some reason. And it REALLY FUCKING HURT in a way that the perc0set wasn’t touching. The only thing that helped, really, was to whine and moan about it, then take some perc0set to dope me up so I’d fall asleep and not be awake to feel the pain. Friday I was in less pain – in fact, after 3 am Friday, I didn’t take another perc0set until that night – but I was more uncomfortable in my abdominal area. Specifically, I looked like I was 9 months pregnant, and when I showed Fred how bloated I was, his eyes popped out of his head. It was easier to get up and down, and I was able to sleep on my left side as well as my right side, so obviously things were improving. Saturday we got up and left the house early and ended up in Lacon – about half an hour away – to check out their “Trading Days”, which is like a big flea market. We were only there for about an hour, walking around and looking at things. From there we went to Hartselle and wandered through the antique stores – looking for something that would work in an area of the kitchen in the new house – and then we went and had Mexican food for lunch. Which was probably a little too soon for me, since I was supposed to be “working up to” eating solid food again, but that Mexican food was the best stuff I’d eaten in days and it didn’t have an adverse effect on my system, so I didn’t regret it. When we got home Saturday I put my nightgown on, because the waistband of my pants had irritated my belly button (where the biggest laparascopic incision was), and I needed to wander around in something loose and non-irritating. Fred sat on his couch and read, and I sat on my couch and snoozed, and we had a conversation wherein we discussed that the swelling in my stomach had gone down a little, so I only looked like I was 7 1/2 months pregnant instead of 8. Sunday I slept in until almost 9, and when I rolled out of bed, the pain was very noticeably better. I still felt a little light-headed, but I puttered around the house doing a few things, then took a shower and sat in the bedroom and read while Fred vacuumed the entire downstairs for me, then cleared everything out of the downstairs hallway and painted the walls. Later, he filled up the bird feeders at my request, then helped me clean out the bird bath (I did the scrubbing, he did the lifting and dumping), then we had steak and fresh tomatoes for dinner. And my stomach was even a little less swollen, so I looked like I was maybe 7 months pregnant. This morning, I meant to sleep in, but ended up not doing so because the cats were wild and running around. I got up and ended up being so grossed-out by the floor in the master bathroom that I got out the vacuum cleaner (I didn’t do any lifting, don’t worry!) and vacuumed most of the upstairs, then threw in some laundry, called to cancel my physical therapy appointment for tomorrow, took a shower, ran some papers to Fred (for the mortgage application for the new house), dropped a few things off at the post office, and picked up a few groceries. I’m feeling a little tired, and I think there’ll be a nap in my afternoon, but other than that, I feel okay. And the swelling has gone down even more. Today? Today I only look like I’m about six months pregnant. I have a follow-up appointment with my surgeon on Thursday, but when I called (last Wednesday, as soon as I got home from the hospital, mind you) to make an appointment with my GI, I found that neither of the two I’ve seen at that practice is available this week, and the one I saw most recently is going to be off the entire month of September. So I made an appointment with the other one for next Tuesday, the day after Labor Day. It’s probably for the best I couldn’t get in to see the GI ’til next week, since it takes about two weeks for liver biopsy results to come back. As always, when I find out more, I’ll let y’all know. I’m hoping like hell that by the end of the week I’ll be feeling back to normal!
Sugarbutt melted right out of his bed. Melted kitty everywhere! But at least he appears to be happy about it.