Gall Bladder Good Bye

Oh me and my surgeries. Well this story began long ago....

The first time I heard about a gall bladder I was 17 and on a trip to Ashland to see some plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival with my mom and sibs. In the middle of the night my mom woke me up and tells me she needed me to drive her to the hospital. An emergency operation and a long hospital stay were in store for my mom while I drove myself and siblings home while my grandpa came to take care of my mom. It was not a fond memory and kind of scary because I think it burst which is not good and life threatening.

Fast forward to two years ago when I first started getting attacks. They were pretty few and far between but enough to completely confine me to my bed during them. I am not exaggerating when I say it is the absolute worst pain I have ever felt and I would never wish it on my worst enemy. It would knock me out for around an hour then leave me exhausted the rest of the day. The weird thing about gall stones is that after the attack you feel perfectly fine, like there was no pain at all which gave me the false sense of security that it was over and done with. And often the time in between them made me think it was just a fluke. These attacks, which happened every month or so lasted 7-8 months then they stopped for almost an entire year. I of course made sure to not eat foods that triggered it (normally it is fatty foods but for me I could eat almost anything but a high in fat dairy would do me in, like full fat yogurt or cheese)

After a year of nothing I got pregnant and it all started again and it was terrible. I was lucky though because no attacks happened while I was out and about and so I would just have the boys go watch a movie while I felt like I was dying on my bed. I still was in denial about the whole thing but toward month 7 I knew something had to be done soon because I couldn't do this with a baby along with everything else.

I went to the Dr. who said we couldn't do much until after baby because I was so far along so when I was up to it after Davis I got the ultrasound and surprise surprise, gall stones! Duh. I met with a surgeon to talk about getting it taken care of. Luckily my body gave me a break for 3 weeks before baby and after. I still had them but my attacks were much smaller, like a 5 on the pain scale instead of a 10 so I could actually function to some degree. I knew that I would probably be fine if I waited  a while to get it taken care of but decided to get it out as soon as possible for various reasons. 1), with a big surgery under my belt for the year our insurance deductible capped, 2) there wouldn't be school for 3 weeks for the holidays so I wouldn't have to worry about recovering while trying to orchestrate getting two kids to school and all that that entails, 3) I could get family help with my kiddos.

It all kind of happened fast from the day I scheduled it to 5 days later but it all worked out in the end. I of course was the most nervous about the IV because with my C-section it took almost an hour, 5 stabs and a lot of tears to get it in. I told this to my nurse but she was very reassuring and told me she'd been doing this 20 years and to give her try. I'm not going to lie, I was totally saying 'yeah right' in my head and bracing myself for the worst but she did it quickly and with only one try. I was duly impressed and relaxed after that.

My eyes closed and the next thing I know I was back in my room. I felt awesome! I mean as far as I could considering I'd just had an organ removed. And I finally got to have some water after a 12 fast. Ice chips never tasted so good.

Now this was the little guy I was worried about just because he was only a month and a half old and had never been babysat by anyone. He had also never taken a bottle before and I knew I was going to be gone the whole day so he would have to at some point. So true to myself I wrote up a full sheet of how we have been doing things and what seems to work with the little guy for my mom while I was gone along with what was going on with the boys and school.

Of course I fretted too much about the whole thing and it ended out working well, he's a pretty mellow little man which makes things easy.

A picture of us a couple days after. He has such a handsome smile.

Update: It has been over a week and a half since the surgery and I am doing well. It was a bigger recovery than I thought actually and I was sorer than I thought I would be. Also I had gas pains, if that's what you call it. When they cut you open they use gas to help open things up and in the course of things some can get trapped after they patch you all up. This is normal and happens a lot when someone gets any surgery, the body will eventually absorb it. But while it's doing that it can be very painful and for me I had a lot of shoulder pain and side pain so it hurt really bad when I took a full  breath. A lot of the time I was taking pain meds not for the incision sites but for the gas pain. But now it is all gone and good riddance! And after recovering from a nasty cold I got a few days after the surgery I am now at about a 80-90%. Yeah for feeling normal!