The saga of the gallbladder
Saturday, 27th May
Dinner at Tallulas. Lots of hummous and couscous.
Sunday, 28th May
3:30 am - I woke up with a pain in my stomach that felt kinda like indigestion, but not really. I ended up vomiting until there was nothing left, but the pain did not feel any better and I really didn’t feel nuaseated. I tried to sleep through the pain, but it kept getting worse. I would get up and walk around, which made me burp, but that relief didn’t last.
I laid back in bed, squirmed trying to find the right position, got up again, laid on the floor - nothing helped. There was a squeezing, cramping feeling in my gut, just below my sternum and off to the right.
Try to sleep again
6:30 am - Got up, called some of the people that I was out with the night before to see if they had gotten sick too. No answer. Called another person, he answered, but was feeling fine. He was also half asleep.
I started looking it up on the internet and a few sites pointed to possible gallstones. It hurt bad.
7:15 am - Drive myself to the hospital (UNC Chapel Hill Hospital). No waiting line, triage nurse gets my vitals and admits me to the ER. Then the send me to registration. They seem to take an inordinately long time getting my personal info. Maybe that is jus the pain talking. Finally they get me into a bed.
8:00 am - Ring the nurse call bell b/c no one has stopped by to check me out since I was put in the bed.
8:25 am - Nurse and doctor come in together. Nurse askes “Did you need something, I see that your call light is on”. I respond “I rang that about 20 minutes ago b/c I’m in the worst pain I’ve ever been in”.
(Thats the truth. The only other major thing I can think of was tearing my ACL and meniscus while tumbling. I got up and walked away from that. This hurt REAL bad)
The doctor asked her to start an IV of some pain killer I didn’t recognize. I pass out. He comes back in shortly with a portable ultrasound machine and checks me. “Yeap, you’ve got gallstones.” The nurse asks if she should still give me [whatever painkiller]. The doctor says “No, put him on Morphine”
8:30 am - The nurse administers the mophine.
8:31 am - A wave of calming comes down from my head to my toes, like a copy machine’s light making a pass across my body. The pain has become quite manageable. I make a few phone calls on my mobile phone to let people know what is going on.
9:20 am - The attending doctor comes by to tell me that they are going to take out my gallbladder. Sometime later my mother calls the attending doctor, hears that they are going to perform surgery and schedules a flight out to stay with me.
A few hours and a couple of extra doses of morphine later - A nurse’s aid comes by with a wheelchair to take me for the official ultrasound. As soon as I sit up I start to vomit bile. It continues on the way to the ultrasound, after getting up from it, and on the way back.
(We find out later that the extra doses of morhpine were needed b/c I was probably passing a gallstone at the time. The vomiting was probably a realted after effect.)
I start to feel a bit better and I fall fast asleep. (I hadn’t slept most of the night, so my body was just really tired, and possibly relieved from passing the stone). Some time passed. Then some more. Still no word on the official ultrasound.
more time - The surigical resident comes by, draws me a picture of my liver, gallbladder and intestines and shows me what happens during surgery and explains the few risks. I tell her to cut me open and get it done. She needs to wait for the attending surgeon to concur.
some more time - The attending surgeon says that its not infected and I appear to be much better, so they recommend that I go home and get rest. They’ll give me an appointment with the head surgeon who will run tests on tuesday. Its sunday of on memorial day weekend, so they couldn’t get to me until Tuesday anyway.
Too late to call mom, she’s already on a plane.
7:00 pm They discharge me with a perscriptiong for Tylenol #3. Chuck picks me up and I go home.
9:00 pm Mom gets in. I show her around the house, she heads out to get some food. I go to bed.
Monday, 29th May
11:30 am - Since there won’t be much happening with me until the tests from Tuesday get done Mom leaves early to get out of my hear, check out Southpoint Mall and then catch a 3pm flight home.
5:30 pm - I drive to get my perscription filled and buy a thermometer. I catch the pharmacy down the road just in time to fill the perscription. My gut is starting to cramp up again.
6:00 pm - I take my temperature. Several times. The new termometer says I have a 101.7 degree fever. My discharge sheet tells me to come back if my fever is > 100.
7:10 pm - Jay Blender “drives” me to the hospital. (We got there by car, and he was operating the vehicle, but I don’t think you can call what he does “driving”)
7:20 pm - After more triage nurse and more registration process they admit be back into the ER. The medical resident says we should take it out, especially with the spike in fever. The surgical attending says, “lets do this, we’ll admit you to the hospital, watch you progess, do labs and vitals in the morning and let you know what we’ll do.”
They run an IV, give me morphine again, I start to fall in and out of sleep.
Tuesday, 30th May
1:15 am - They finally get the orders to move me from ER to the hospital. I sleep most of the night on morphine, antibiotics and fluids.
9:00ish am - The head surgeon and his resident come to tell me my options:
“Usually in cases like your’s we rush people to the OR as quickly as possible, get rid of the gallbladder and we’re done with it. That is the first option.”
“ok”
“The second option is for us to put you on antibiotics and painkillers for 3-4 WEEKS and then do the surgery. There is little chance of problems during surgery with that option”
“ok”
“I would suggest, for someone your age, who probably wants to get back to doing whatever you where doing before this, we go with the first option”
“Cut it out of me…”
“We’ll put you on the add-on list, we should have an appointment around 3:30 pm”
9:30ish am to 4:30pm - I wait. It looks something like this:
4:3o pm - Time for surgery. They bring me down and drug me up. The next thing I remember is waking up. The pain and pressure in my gut are magically gone. Ahhhhh.
Then the recovery nurse (or someone) starts tugging and grabbing at my IV and getting ready to move me. Its all a bit more rough than a drugged up, post surgical, groggy, disoriented person might want to deal with. She wheels me back to my room and lets me know:
“You gonna have to slide over to your bed yourself.”
Who was I to argue?
The give me a press-once-every-eight-minutes-for-mophine button and off to sleep I go.
Wednesday, 31st May
12:30 am - The night nurse comes in to ask if I’ve urinated yet.
I haven’t.
She says that its ok, but if I don’t by 3 am, we’ll have to start talking about a catheter.
12:30:01 am - All of a sudden I really have to pee. I wake up every hour on the hour after that and deposit a new half liter sample in the portable urinal. Catheter arverted.
7:20 am - I’m up for the day. Volunteers stop in and drop by newspapers and magazines. I do the sudoku and crossword puzzle. The surgical resident stops in and checks on me:
“Can I see your incisions?”
“Sure” (he’s kinda cute, but now is not the time 
)
“Okay, they look good. The one on the navel is still moist, but that’s to be expected here.”
“It’s ok that its still bloody like that?”
“Yeah, in fact you’ll probably notice a little more pain from that one. We had to make the incision larger than we normally do because your gallbladder was so swollen that we couldn’t fit it out of the regular incision”
“hmmm”
“Well it looks like you’re doing really well, we might even be able to get you out of here today”
“I’ll follow your instructions”
9 something am - Dietary comes to drop off my clear liquid diet. I tell them that I can’t eat the chicken broth b/c I don’t eat meat. They tell me to tell the nurse who can tell them and they can probably get me vegetable broth.
I do.
45 minutes later - They bring up some veggie broth.
about noon - Dietary comes up to drop off more clear liquid. I ask the guy whats on the tray.
“Coffee, Jello, OJ and Chicken broth”
“I don’t eat meat.”
“Oh, there’s no meat here”
] pause [
“Oh, oh the chicken broth. Ok”
(he never brought up veggie broth)
about 1pm - My belly starts to hurt. It starts to really hurt. It feels like gas pain, but there is no relief in sight. The nurse calls the doctor who tells her that that is to be expected and I should walk around and pass gas to get rid of the pain.
many laps around the 5th floor nurse’s station later - My belly still hurts, and my shoulders are killing me.
(Apparently there is some connection between the diaphragm and the shoulders in the nervous system. The diaphragm gets all wacky from when your belly gets blown up with gas for the surgery. After all the anestetic wears of you start to feel it. Its like a stabbing pain in your shoulders. Also, I heard from someone that they heard that the belly takes longer than the rest of the body to ‘wake up’ after the anestetic in surgery, so the pain would be delayed. Whatever. It hurt)
4:30 pm - The doctor stops by again and says that we’ll keep me here overnight for the pain and I should be ok in the morning.
I’m able to sleep through most of the night b/c I happen upon a position that lets me rest without my shoulder pain.
Thursday, 1st June
9:00 am - The doctor comes in, checks the incisions, takes off the waterproof tape and tells me that things are looking good. My gas pain is much better and I’ve passed some, so he says I should be able to go soon.
I rest a bit more, the nurse gets my discharge papers and I’m out the door. Jay picks me up (Hutch comes along) and “drives” me home. He is joking on the way, but it really hurts to laugh. Surprisingly enough we make it home in one peice and I rest on the couch for the next three days.
I watched:
The second half of the first season of LOST.
The entire second season of LOST.
Alien (I’d never seen it before).
A few shows that I had tivo’d.
I’m feeling much better now…
I also read 
I read 
