Cholecystectomy, say it three times fast
In a little while
This hurt will hurt no more
I'll be home, love
When the night takes a deep breath
And the daylight has no end
If I crawl, if I come crawling home
Will you be there?
For those of you who missed the memo, I'm in the hospital awaiting surgery. U2 is keeping me company...
So I can start from the beginning, or as near to it as I know to start. Around 10am Mom brought me my laptop and season 5 of Smallville, and thanks to the free provincial internet server here, I am free to roam online and watch DVDs and enjoy friends when they come to visit. This makes my day a whole lot better, as it's much easier to forget the scaryness of the surgeon's nefarious plans to remove a part of my body.
It was perhaps aposematic (thank you AWAD) that I have been having trouble with my digestive system for some time now. A couple of friends new about it, but I didn't feel the need to worry everyone, and I can't remember posting about it really. On July 10th, I posted saying that I had a really bad gut ache, and then I posted the next day about a night of pain that I wanted to quickly forget? Well, those were signposts. Sunday morning I awoke fine at 7am, then went back to sleep, then when I awoke around 9:25 the pain was excruciating. I've heard tales of kidney/gallbladder pain, but this was an initiation I would have liked to avoid. After about three hours of pure pain to the exclusion of all else, I told Mom that I needed to get to a hospital. I had to get dressed, which sucked, and then I had to wait for the Taxi, which sucked. Thankfully my cabbie was a smooth driver. I ended up having to walk around the guardrail to the other end of the ramp when I got to Emergency, and I could barely stand at the front desk. They had no place to put me, so I waited in the waiting room for hours, trying to find a position that hurt less, which wasn't happening. Mom eventually arrived, having picked up the family car. Hours later I got into a room, and further hours after that, like about 3:30, I finally got painkillers. I even asked my Mom how long I'd been going. Six hours with no painkillers - a six hours I hope to never revisit.
So they gave me Gravol and a nifty pain killer, the name of which I can't remember. It helped the pain but had no side effects.
I had to stifle a snicker when they said they'd have to do a "digital rectal insertion" because, come on, doctors and their lingo. Fortunately it was merely an uncomfortable experience and not a painful one.
Now for the fun stuff. Guess how many needles they've tried sticking me with for blood/IV within the last 24 hours? Over a dozen. I am a bad one for veins, and I have holes in my inner elbows and wrists and on top of my hand and all over. I've had about six or seven different lab techs try to get blood from my stony self. Only three succeeded. The last lady got it on the first try - a record. Yesterday they even went all old fashioned and used a syringe. I can just see some of you queasy types on my Flist going ballistic right about now. It's not pretty, but I tried to be patient with them. It's not their fault they have to make me into a pincushion so they can do bloodwork.
I had an ultrasound around 9 last night, which was a painful experience because she kept digging around in my unhappy organs. On the plus side, I did get to see a nice shot of my spleen, the only reason I knew that is because she typed "SPL" onto the screen and I asked if that was my spleen. I mean, come on, who here has seen their spleen? I feel special! After the ultrasound I was in a lot of pain again, and they gave me this nifty drug called "Dolotol" or something like that, which is basically a narcotic that made me all buzzed and swiped all my cares away for awhile, though it did kind of make my head ache when my family arrived and I had to communicate. I got back to sleep after 10:30, when I made my phone post. I slept fitfully because a couple of people arrived in the room overnight. I was awoken to someone trying to draw blood again. Not my preferred method of waking?
All in all, I have been asked numerous questions from the laughable (are you pregnant, do you smoke etc.) to the bizzare (Have you lived on the street within the past 6 months?) to the embarrassing - questions about stools and whatnot. It's been a blast. I've thrown up twice, mostly after, you know, moving from one place to another.
This morning there was a whole gaggle of doctors in my room just to watch the explaination of the procedure and see me sign the waiver. The procedure involves a number of small laproscopy incisions, possibly a bigger one if they need more accuracy. My condition is more severe than the average gallbladder removal as the rest of my organs are all upset as well, so it will be a more complicated surgery than normal.
I can't help but ask myself how bad this would be if I hadn't started the drive to eat healthier and excersise more these last two years... But anyway. It sucks that I have to take this time off work, it sucks that I can't try again for my driver's on Thursday, and I'm sincerely hoping that I'll be feeling fine enough to hit Dancing With The Stars on Friday, since I already have an expensive ticket. Hopefully by the time I hit the Blogathon, I'll be feeling well enough to do the posts every half hour for 24 hours - I may grab a number of catnaps so that I don't start feeling ill. So there will be some short posts for sure.
That's all I've got to say for now. I should have friends coming in soon, so I'll sign off.
This hurt will hurt no more
I'll be home, love
When the night takes a deep breath
And the daylight has no end
If I crawl, if I come crawling home
Will you be there?
For those of you who missed the memo, I'm in the hospital awaiting surgery. U2 is keeping me company...
So I can start from the beginning, or as near to it as I know to start. Around 10am Mom brought me my laptop and season 5 of Smallville, and thanks to the free provincial internet server here, I am free to roam online and watch DVDs and enjoy friends when they come to visit. This makes my day a whole lot better, as it's much easier to forget the scaryness of the surgeon's nefarious plans to remove a part of my body.
It was perhaps aposematic (thank you AWAD) that I have been having trouble with my digestive system for some time now. A couple of friends new about it, but I didn't feel the need to worry everyone, and I can't remember posting about it really. On July 10th, I posted saying that I had a really bad gut ache, and then I posted the next day about a night of pain that I wanted to quickly forget? Well, those were signposts. Sunday morning I awoke fine at 7am, then went back to sleep, then when I awoke around 9:25 the pain was excruciating. I've heard tales of kidney/gallbladder pain, but this was an initiation I would have liked to avoid. After about three hours of pure pain to the exclusion of all else, I told Mom that I needed to get to a hospital. I had to get dressed, which sucked, and then I had to wait for the Taxi, which sucked. Thankfully my cabbie was a smooth driver. I ended up having to walk around the guardrail to the other end of the ramp when I got to Emergency, and I could barely stand at the front desk. They had no place to put me, so I waited in the waiting room for hours, trying to find a position that hurt less, which wasn't happening. Mom eventually arrived, having picked up the family car. Hours later I got into a room, and further hours after that, like about 3:30, I finally got painkillers. I even asked my Mom how long I'd been going. Six hours with no painkillers - a six hours I hope to never revisit.
So they gave me Gravol and a nifty pain killer, the name of which I can't remember. It helped the pain but had no side effects.
I had to stifle a snicker when they said they'd have to do a "digital rectal insertion" because, come on, doctors and their lingo. Fortunately it was merely an uncomfortable experience and not a painful one.
Now for the fun stuff. Guess how many needles they've tried sticking me with for blood/IV within the last 24 hours? Over a dozen. I am a bad one for veins, and I have holes in my inner elbows and wrists and on top of my hand and all over. I've had about six or seven different lab techs try to get blood from my stony self. Only three succeeded. The last lady got it on the first try - a record. Yesterday they even went all old fashioned and used a syringe. I can just see some of you queasy types on my Flist going ballistic right about now. It's not pretty, but I tried to be patient with them. It's not their fault they have to make me into a pincushion so they can do bloodwork.
I had an ultrasound around 9 last night, which was a painful experience because she kept digging around in my unhappy organs. On the plus side, I did get to see a nice shot of my spleen, the only reason I knew that is because she typed "SPL" onto the screen and I asked if that was my spleen. I mean, come on, who here has seen their spleen? I feel special! After the ultrasound I was in a lot of pain again, and they gave me this nifty drug called "Dolotol" or something like that, which is basically a narcotic that made me all buzzed and swiped all my cares away for awhile, though it did kind of make my head ache when my family arrived and I had to communicate. I got back to sleep after 10:30, when I made my phone post. I slept fitfully because a couple of people arrived in the room overnight. I was awoken to someone trying to draw blood again. Not my preferred method of waking?
All in all, I have been asked numerous questions from the laughable (are you pregnant, do you smoke etc.) to the bizzare (Have you lived on the street within the past 6 months?) to the embarrassing - questions about stools and whatnot. It's been a blast. I've thrown up twice, mostly after, you know, moving from one place to another.
This morning there was a whole gaggle of doctors in my room just to watch the explaination of the procedure and see me sign the waiver. The procedure involves a number of small laproscopy incisions, possibly a bigger one if they need more accuracy. My condition is more severe than the average gallbladder removal as the rest of my organs are all upset as well, so it will be a more complicated surgery than normal.
I can't help but ask myself how bad this would be if I hadn't started the drive to eat healthier and excersise more these last two years... But anyway. It sucks that I have to take this time off work, it sucks that I can't try again for my driver's on Thursday, and I'm sincerely hoping that I'll be feeling fine enough to hit Dancing With The Stars on Friday, since I already have an expensive ticket. Hopefully by the time I hit the Blogathon, I'll be feeling well enough to do the posts every half hour for 24 hours - I may grab a number of catnaps so that I don't start feeling ill. So there will be some short posts for sure.
That's all I've got to say for now. I should have friends coming in soon, so I'll sign off.