A Week of Gall

So, after more than a year of enduring gallbladder attacks of varying severity, I finally caved.

Sunday July 06 I had a salad for dinner. As in, lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers, with maybe two tablespoons of Italian dressing. Then within half an hour I felt the telltale signs of an attack coming as though I had eaten something like pizza or mac and cheese that you would actually EXPECT to trigger an attack.

I endured the pain for nearly six hours until realized I wouldn't be getting to bed on time and would therefore have to call out of work once again... and then I asked myself how many more times I wanted to be doing this.

So I turned and asked Kevin what he thought about me going to the emergency room.

And so, just after midnight on Monday July 07, we got in the car for a short road trip to St. Mary Hospital.

What fun!

The ER was basically empty, so we hoped that meant I would only have to wait TWO hours instead of something like nine or ten.

I think it was after 3:00 in the morning when they took me for an ultrasound. Then we had to wait until after 5:00 for the results to come back and tell the doctors,

The overnight ER doctor wanted me to try eating some saltine crackers to see if that triggered any additional pain so she could use it as an argument to try to get the surgeon to squeeze me in later that day. But I was just starting to feel like the pain might finally be tapering off after nearly twelve hours, so I told her I wasn't about to put ANYTHING in my stomach anytime soon.

Kevin shrugged and insisted, "Well I don't have a gallbladder, so I can eat those crackers, no problem."

The doctor had convinced me that staying in the hospital so they could admit me and give me a room was better than going home and then having to schedule an out-patient surgery for later in the week or month. So that's what I did.

But unfortunately the surgeon who came to see me around sunrise insisted that he wasn't fully convinced that it was my gallbladder (or that it was ONLY my gallbladder). And so he wanted to do more tests before just cutting me open and hacking out any of my organs.

So the entire rest of Monday morning and afternoon was wasted on an hours-long test where they had me swallow some radioactive isotope that would light up my entire digestive system so they could see what was going on.

And the test took FOREVER. But it worked.

My entire system lit up. Except for my gallbladder. It was basically like it didn't exist, or like it wasn't plugged in to the rest of my system. It just wasn't functioning at all... which certainly explained a lot!

Unfortunately there was no time to fit me in on the operating room's schedule Monday afternoon by the time we completed the isotope test and the doctors analyzed the results.

So surgery had to wait until Tuesday.

But everything went perfectly, and when I got out of recovery and back up to my room, Kevin and Catherine were already there waiting for me :)

Catherine said she was pretty sure my room was the same one that Kevin's dad had been in back in the early 1990s!

This was the view from my window around 5:00pm:

And then at 6:15:

And then just a short time later when Kevin and Catherine were going to head out, a freak thunderstorm blew through!

The wind and rain and lightning kept up until after 7:00pm, and Kevin and Catherine were stuck waiting for it all to blow over since they had had to park in one of the farthest spots away from the hospital's front doors.

But then they stopped for dinner at Pizza Pie II in Langhorne, and Kevin sent me pictures of this rainbow they saw when they came back out just after 8:00pm:

We knew I'd be going home at some point on Wednesday afternoon, so Kevin played it safe and showed up right around noon (when "afternoon" officially begins).

It was a much nicer day than the day before:

Of course, they kept me there until 5:00pm before they finally gave me a completely unceremonious "oh yeah, you can go home".

So we got to drive home in afternoon rush hour (which is always super fun in Langhorne). Then we had roast beef sandwiches for dinner, watched a couple hours of TV, and then I was hurting and decided to get in bed and call it a night at 8:00pm.

Tragically I missed this unbelievable new low when our neighbor Ruth came up with a novel way to bring in her groceries an hour later:

Meanwhile I had already let my boss know that I was taking Thursday and Friday off. So I slept in Thursday morning and tried to make up for all the sleep I DIDN'T get in the hospital (with all the beeps and alarms and everybody slamming doors all day and night).

When I finally got up, Kevin said that since I was home on a weekday for once, I got to see all the festivities that go on around here during the daytime.

So I did.

Apparently the white Elantra has an Illinois plate and no parking pass for our complex, and has been parked here since MONDAY despite the memo our landlord sent out last month insisting that unauthorized cars would be getting towed "immediately."

And as for "the Handyvan," Kevin said that guy's been showing up every day to work on remodeling Fuggy's apartment. He at least parks out in the middle of the lot where he won't inconvenience anybody, but Kevin just finds it funny that a guy working as a handyman has the vehicular equivalent of a Motel 6.

On Friday afternoon we went grocery shopping together, mainly just to beat the weekend crowd and so I could get up and get some steps in to help the recovery process.

I also talked to Taylor, and she and Ahlina are doing well for the most part except that Ahlina's car is completely shot to the point that they'll spend more getting it running again than the car is even worth.

So they're stuck using Uber to get to work and back which is costing them more than $400 a month :(

And apparently they have their eyes set on an Infiniti because that's what Ahlina's dad and brother each drive and they convinced the girls that Infinitis are really something special. So they have a dealer trying to work them on a 2013 model with 120,000 miles and two known accidents in its history... for $15,000!

Obviously Kevin and I have been doing our best to talk them out of it and into something more sensible like a Corolla or a Civic. Or maybe even a lower end Nissan or Mazda or something, if that's what they find.

Kevin made quesadillas for dinner Friday night, because his quesadillas are AMAZING and now I can actually eat them without worrying about a stupid gallbladder attack!

Then we took Riley to Kassie's for a sleepover. And Noelle said they do want the laptop back even though we told them last month that Kevin wiped out Windows to install Linux, and so all their files are gone.

Saturday was Catherine and Ron's anniversary, so Kelly and Steve treated all of us to dinner from Mission BBQ!

Then Catherine and Ron opened their anniversary cards:

And I decided to photobomb one of the pictures like Liv did to me on Father's Day:

Before we left Catherine and Ron's, Kevin checked the garden and brought in the inaugural tomato harvest: 7 whole entire cherry tomatoes!

But before we went home I said that I wanted a Blizzard from Dairy Queen just so I could enjoy eating something that would have completely sidelined me just a few days prior.

The forces of the universe conspired against us as always. First we got stuck behind a New Jersey reincarnation of "Ladder Guy" (as Kevin calls them):

We finally managed to get around him, only to be faced with yet another New Jersey driver hanging out in the left lane!

This one was a Range Rover, and who could have guessed that the "range" in question was about 13mph to 18mph? On a highway. In the fast lane.

We stood in line at Dairy Queen for probably close to 25 minutes. At some point I saw a girl about 20 people behind us who looked just like Taylor and Ahlina's old friend and roommate CJ (who went back to Connecticut more than a year ago now, after she Ahlina got into that fist fight over the fact that CJ was 21 at the time and dating a 17 year old).

Sure enough, as we were pulling out of the parking lot a little while later we saw a car with a Connecticut plate. So I guess it was CJ, and she either moved back down here to resume her relationship with her old girlfriend Alex, or she's just down here visiting.

Kevin and I just kind of shrugged. Neither of us had ever had any problem with her, and there's no reason for her not to get along with her life the way Taylor and Ahlina have :)

Oh and, as we were waiting for our Blizzards, Kevin snapped a picture of this mispelling of the word barbecue so he could make fun of it later:

We finally finished watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer a few nights prior, so later Saturday evening Kevin and I started watching Blood Ties.

We were halfway through the second episode when Kevin's mini PC that has all his movies, shows, and video games on it just decided to die for seemingly no reason!

But luckily he has backups of everything. So he pulled out the same USB stick he just used two weeks ago to put Linux on Riley's Noelle's laptop, and he rebuilt the entire system, transferred new copies of all his media onto it, and we were back up and running inside of an hour and a half.

That brings us to yesterday (Sunday). It was a relatively nice day outside and Kevin and I decided to take a short walk (just around the block since I'm still hurting from my surgery).

As fate would have it, "Mad Meth" pulled into the parking lot just as we were coming downstairs. So we were curious to see what that jackass might have to say as we got closer.

But he just glanced at us and sized us up as we passed each other, and he didn't say a word.

When we got home again we checked the mail. How much longer do you think this thing will remain upright before it capsizes?

And today I went back to work after an entire week out. Then Kevin and I chanced the weather to take another quick walk around the block:

Oddly enough, the sky when we got home looked a lot like how I feel right now.

Just like dark clouds, I know this pain will pass soon. But in the meantime it sure is annoying!!