more excuses for not updating
So I haven't updated in a while. This is because my health has once again failed me.
I had intended to start updating the Jonny Crossbones guest strips I've been receiving this Tuesday, but last Wednesday, I started having a somewhat intense pain in my abdomen. I went home from the studio early and started vomiting. I had similar symptoms last year about this time, and the nurse I spoke to advised me that it was likely just dehydration brought on by my ulcerative colitis (which it now looks like it is, instead of Crohn's, thank goodness) to take lots of fluids and try to eat something. Last year, that worked; I was able to keep down Gatorade and some yogurt and the pain passed in a few hours. This time I couldn't keep anything down, and the pain hadn't subsided by about midnight so I went to the emergency room. They put me on an IV and after a couple hours I felt better and I went home. On Saturday I started having the pain and vomiting again, even though I'd been very carefully drinking lots of fluids and relaxing since Wednesday. By about ten that evening, the pain was so intense I was having trouble moving and I'd been vomiting bile for about four hours. I went into the emergency room again and, after a few more hours of testing, they found that I had gallstones, or at least one big one.
They decided to keep me in the hospital overnight, and ran some more tests the next day. It turned out my gall bladder wasn't working at all, and possibly hadn't been working for maybe up to a year; the prednisone I've been taking for the ulcerative colitis has been masking the symptoms of gall bladder problems. Basically all the gall bladder does is store the bile produced by the liver until the digestive system needs it to help dissolve fats. My gallstone had lodged in the duct between the liver and the gall bladder, cutting off the bladder completely. All the bile was going directly into my intestines, and the gall bladder was starting to get inflamed and hardened. The pain was the body squeezing my gall bladder to get the bile out, when there was no bile in there to squeeze out. In any case, they decided they had to get my gall bladder out of there pronto before it did any real damage.
So I went into surgery on Monday night-- I was glad of that, because my ulcerative colitis is flaring right now and the surgeons were thinking they might want to keep me in the hospital until that cleared up, then do the surgery. That would have been a week or two in the hospital on an IV with no solid food, and that would have been horrible. They were able to do a lacroscopic surgery, which involves just a few small incisions, and the surgery is done mostly using a camera inserted into the abdomen instead of opening the whole thing up. That meant that I was able to go home on Tuesday afternoon, which was a big relief.
I've been taking it easy all week, and I hope I'll be back to posting some comics next Tuesday. I'm actually feeling better now than I've felt in months. I guess I'd been feeling sick but it came on so gradually that I didn't notice it-- now that I'm feeling good it feels great. I'm also starting a new medication for my ulcerative colitis, and I'm hoping that'll work better than the mesalamine tablets I was taking before. There's some potential nasty side effects, but with some luck I'll avoid them. And I'll be able to get off these darn steroids, which'll be a big relief.
I had intended to start updating the Jonny Crossbones guest strips I've been receiving this Tuesday, but last Wednesday, I started having a somewhat intense pain in my abdomen. I went home from the studio early and started vomiting. I had similar symptoms last year about this time, and the nurse I spoke to advised me that it was likely just dehydration brought on by my ulcerative colitis (which it now looks like it is, instead of Crohn's, thank goodness) to take lots of fluids and try to eat something. Last year, that worked; I was able to keep down Gatorade and some yogurt and the pain passed in a few hours. This time I couldn't keep anything down, and the pain hadn't subsided by about midnight so I went to the emergency room. They put me on an IV and after a couple hours I felt better and I went home. On Saturday I started having the pain and vomiting again, even though I'd been very carefully drinking lots of fluids and relaxing since Wednesday. By about ten that evening, the pain was so intense I was having trouble moving and I'd been vomiting bile for about four hours. I went into the emergency room again and, after a few more hours of testing, they found that I had gallstones, or at least one big one.
They decided to keep me in the hospital overnight, and ran some more tests the next day. It turned out my gall bladder wasn't working at all, and possibly hadn't been working for maybe up to a year; the prednisone I've been taking for the ulcerative colitis has been masking the symptoms of gall bladder problems. Basically all the gall bladder does is store the bile produced by the liver until the digestive system needs it to help dissolve fats. My gallstone had lodged in the duct between the liver and the gall bladder, cutting off the bladder completely. All the bile was going directly into my intestines, and the gall bladder was starting to get inflamed and hardened. The pain was the body squeezing my gall bladder to get the bile out, when there was no bile in there to squeeze out. In any case, they decided they had to get my gall bladder out of there pronto before it did any real damage.
So I went into surgery on Monday night-- I was glad of that, because my ulcerative colitis is flaring right now and the surgeons were thinking they might want to keep me in the hospital until that cleared up, then do the surgery. That would have been a week or two in the hospital on an IV with no solid food, and that would have been horrible. They were able to do a lacroscopic surgery, which involves just a few small incisions, and the surgery is done mostly using a camera inserted into the abdomen instead of opening the whole thing up. That meant that I was able to go home on Tuesday afternoon, which was a big relief.
I've been taking it easy all week, and I hope I'll be back to posting some comics next Tuesday. I'm actually feeling better now than I've felt in months. I guess I'd been feeling sick but it came on so gradually that I didn't notice it-- now that I'm feeling good it feels great. I'm also starting a new medication for my ulcerative colitis, and I'm hoping that'll work better than the mesalamine tablets I was taking before. There's some potential nasty side effects, but with some luck I'll avoid them. And I'll be able to get off these darn steroids, which'll be a big relief.