When Gallbladders ATTACK!

Well well well... As you know I've been having some issues sleeping and then waking up with horrid back pain. Last Friday I had an ultra sound test to see if I indeed had a gallstone.... Went in early Friday, and sure enough I had two stones... I had a second test scheduled, but decided not to go to it knowing if I got rid of this gallstone I'd be good to go. 
I got a call from my surgeon's office to set an apt for my consultation... Monday at 11am. I was hoping to get an apt for my surgery on Tuesday.. I really wasn't looking forward to having another gallbladder attack... but... It happened Monday morning anyway... 4am and I was up in major pain... vomiting and all... by the time I was supposed to be getting up, I was doing much much better. still felt it, but It was tolerable.  Went into work, and carried on with a dull pain in my back still.  Mom and I met at the Dr's office where I met with my surgeon. He told me the ultra sound showed two stones, one 1.5 and one 1.8cm... The lady who did the ultra sound had me roll over, and one of the stones didn't move, it was stuck at the duct where the bile is supposed to secrete.  This is probably my cause of pain... The Dr was great, he explained what he would do and what I should expect, he for sure helped ease my nerves.  He told me his person would call me to set up a time to get my gallbladder removed.
Monday night I went home and started up my laundry, knowing I wouldn't want to do that when I was recovering... While I was putting away the clean clothes, I felt another attack coming.. This was by far my worst attack I've had. Typically they happen in the middle of the night... but this one started at about 7:30pm.  I thought since I woke up at 4am that day, I'd take some Tylenol pm and fall asleep... yeah that didn't happen. I vomited about 15 min after taking the pill... then continued to do so thru the night. I think it was about 11:15 when I thought I'd try to get up and take a shower, as whenever I did that in the morning while having an attack, I'd felt better.... yeah didn't work. I turned my shower into a bath, that didn't work either... I called the hospital after my bath to find out what I should do as I vomited 4 times already... they told me to get into the ER right away.  Called mom and let her know I was on my way to her house... then we'd head to the ER. It was around 1am when I got there, I think around 2 am they brought me back to do an ekg as I told them I had pain in my chest... that's when I started vomiting again, which I think helped me move up in the list in front of others that were there...
My ekg was fine, again.. around 3am they got me into an ER room, but didn't see a Dr till about 4:30....they finally got me some morphine at 6am.. they gave me 3 tubes of it before they admitted me to the hospital.  I had 2 more tubes pf morphine before the pain started going away at about 10am.
Mom stayed with me until my surgeon came in to talk to me. Dad came around 9am to sit with us too.  He said they could do the surgery at 10pm, or just keep my original apt at 8 the next day... I was soooo thirsty as they wouldn't let me eat or drink anything since they thought I may go into surgery... so I told him lets just keep tomorrow's apt so I can drink and eat... So that's what we did.  I did pretty well on Tuesday as they wouldn't let me eat anything but clear liquids. But I was sooo thankful to be drinking water. 
Mom headed to work and I to sleep... I slept on and off, with the nurses coming in to check my vitals and everything... It was easy to fall back to sleep though after being awake from 4am Monday till noon Tuesday...
My friends Grandpa was two or three rooms down from me, so their family would come down and visit me from time to time... I had lots of visitors, so it was nice.  After work mom dad and stef came to visit, Stef had flowers from me that Dan bought for me.  He's very sweet.  I just wish he was here to hold my hand through this!
Wed morning came along, and it was time for my surgery. I was very nervous...but all the nurses and drs were very sweet, and kept me pretty calm.  I got into my surgery room and they were talking to me, before I knew it someone was waking me up... I couldn't breathe, they asked me "do you want the tube out?" I nodded...  they took it out. 
They brought me back to my room, I kept asking for my dad, no one was getting him... Finally someone got him in the room, and my surgeon was in soon after that. He said "well, one of you stones was actually the size of a golf ball!"  gooooood lord! no wonder I was in so much pain. I thanked him, happy I'd never have to feel that pain again. 
Dad stayed with me for the day. I asked the nurse around 4, "they said I'd be home two hours after surgery" She said "well considering your stone was the size of a golf ball, I think you are doing just fine" 
I was able to go home at 8pm.... it was nice, I was thrilled to get out of the hospital..  I've been out for just over 24 hours now... I'm in some pain at the site where they took my 'golf ball' out of.. It's tough getting up from laying down.... and laying down from sitting up...Right now I'm doing my best to avoid laying down again....
I know that the pain I'm in now will go away. It really sucks, but I know I'll never be in as much pain as I was with those gallbladder attacks, so I'm very thankful for that. 
Hope everyone is doing well.... When I feel up to it, I'll do a blog on my trip out east :)

Back Pain!

So I was just looking back at my blog posts for this one. I remembered this happening to me long long ago. It happened again in the summer while at the cabin... and it's happened a handful of other times.  More recently the nights that it is affecting me are getting closer and closer together. They were happening once a week for a while, then it happened Saturday, Sunday and now again today.  I was trying to hold out till January. I know I'm going to hit my deductible, so why do it at the end of the year, lets do it in Jan, so I've got a full year after fulfilling my deductible. I know I'm going to hit it, so why hit it in December, and then again in January.
Well the back pain was just too intense for me this morning, so I went to urgent care. The Dr had no idea what was wrong with me.  He asked if I had any operations ever, I said not since I was young, he asked what happened, I told him I bit my tongue off.... He was suddenly very interested in my tongue. I'm like dude, I'm not here because of biting my tongue off 25 years ago! He was asking if I had feeling in my tongue, if I could taste blah blah blah. I said yeah I can taste. "well what about on the tip of your tongue?" I said I guess since it happened when I was six I really don't know the difference... then he wanted to look at it. WTH?!  Stick your tongue out.  .. so I was all like :P ... then he looked at it from one side with his little light thingy... and I was all :|  he's all "stick your tongue out again"  so I was all :P and he looked at it from the other side.. then I was all :|  stop looking at my tongue.
finally he moved onto my back problems.  He had no idea.  I told him about my family and their history of heart attacks... so what does he do? orders an EKG.  which turned out to be fine. Can't wait to see that bill.
Got to work and decided it's time to call my PCP.  She right away asked me if he checked my gallbladder.  I don't know, can he check it from looking at my tongue?  hehe.  No I said well he listened to my stomach with the stethoscope...  She's pretty positive that I've got something going on with my gallbladder.  She said not to take ibuprofen any longer... She thinks that's what is making my stomach upset and making me get sick (makes sense, because each time I got sick, I had done the ibuprofen thing...)  She wants me to call her back if it all continues... I have a feeling I'm going to have some work done shortly. Lovely. Too bad I didn't keep my hospital income policy going.  That would have helped in this situation.  uuughhhh.

it is HOT out

GOLLY! it's a scorcher out there today!!  Since I work at an insurance agency, you wont hear me saying this much...I'm ready for some storms to roll thru to make this heat go AWAY! Hopefully the storms won't cause any damage!!!!!!!!!!  It sounds like we wont get any reprieve from this till tomorrow afternoon at the earliest, that's when they say the storms are to move in.
well, it's monday. after today, i'll just have 4 more work days till a week of VACATION!  I'm looking forward to the time off. It'll help my stress levels go down a bit, which is something I am desperately needing. Saturday night I fell asleep for about an hour between 1030 and 1130, and was woke up 3 times by the stinking weather alarm... Had to get up and stop the thing from ringing.  well that last time at 1130, it really woke me up. Not only that, but I had some serious back pains along my shoulders.. I took some ibuprofen, in hopes that it would stop with the pain.  No such luck.. about 2 hours later i took some benadryl hoping that would knock me out... nope not at all. around 3:30am I thought to myself, "im going to be sick" sure enough, i got sick... after that i went over to the trailer and told mom and dad, then went to the bathroom.. when I got back in bed I was able to fall asleep soon after.  I woke up and was fine in the morning. so, I'm not too sure what happened there, but it's strange. This happened to me a couple months ago too.. If it happens again, I'm gonna go to the dr, but at this point... I don't want to waste money on going to the dr for them not to know what is wrong with me.
This time next week I'll have just finished my tour of Target Field... I'm looking forward to this... get into places I haven't seen yet, and maybe we will run into a player or two :)doubtful, but whatever, I can dream, right??