Fun story for today. I am, as my husband says, down a vestigial now. I’ll give the rundown from my point of view. Why? Well, several reasons. Among them, I feel like it’s handy to have a reference to someone else’s experience if something weird is going on. Also knowing the experience could be nice for people writing medical stuff.
I spent most of Friday feeling pretty rough cramps. I don’t normally get them so I was very cranky about it. As we got closer to nighttime, I was beginning to worry about falling asleep and also realizing that this was abnormal, so I decided to run it into urgent care. I was starting to worry that I’d get dismissed as “oh, it’s just cramps, women get cramps” because when you’re female, interacting with medical things can occasionally be a gamble. Being brushed off or ignored has never happened for me but I know people for whom it has happened, and heard many stories about it. In fact, one of my writing group is currently writing a story involving that set in the 1800s. (It’s great and when it comes out I’ll be tooting her horn as loud as I can.)
The concern was, in my case, unfounded though. The doctor asked what the symptoms were, where I was feeling the pain, pushed it, and said “Yeah I think that’s the gallbladder.” From there the machine went rolling. I got blood tests, ultrasounded (my first experience with that not involving small passengers) (I suspected something was up when I saw the technician taking measurements of a little round thing on the images), and they told me they were going to transfer me over to the hospital to start me on antibiotics so they could take it out in the morning. They let me go down to the hospital in the car I drove in, which first lets me know it wasn’t an urgent emergency and second incredibly simplified logistics for my husband the next day. In fact, I drove home which was on the way and he met me with a packed bag and drove me there, so that was nice.
I’ll spare you the boring details of a hospital night, just say I really appreciate them bringing me a pair of earplugs. In the morning, I had a few hours of being awake (and not being allowed to eat, which wasn’t a huge issue at the time) before they brought in a bed and wheeled me down to surgery. It was a bit odd; I’ve been in that hospital on that floor twice before but in the maternity ward, not the surgery prep/recovery side. I remember going through all the halls full of equipment, them asking if I had any questions, me asking if this was the part I wouldn’t remember, and putting on an oxygen mask, then slowly waking up in the recovery room, sore, stiff, and down a gallbladder. I also remembered talking to the nurse in the recovery room about Star Trek IV but couldn’t remember until later why I was doing that. Later being home watching it because I haven’t seen it in ages. We were discussing Dr. McCoy growing a lady a new kidney with a pill. It was a kind of drifting period where I’d be in and out of wakefulness; I don’t think I actually opened my eyes enough to see the nurse’s face clearly until half an hour had passed.
The rest of the day was pretty rough, and yet not. I spent the time sitting in bed, playing games on my phone and listening to podcasts and chatting with my husband when he could be there (which was most of the day; Grandma was able to watch the kids for most of that time), dozing off, oh yeah and feeling like I’d been stabbed several times. Good research for writing, I suppose, right? (I made my husband pack my laptop and writing notebook, insisting “What’s the point of enforced bedrest in a boring room if not to get some writing done?” This would have gone better if I’d been awake for chunks of time together.) The interesting thing that I noticed pretty quickly was my arms and legs were fine, so anything that involved limb strength was no problem. The second my core got involved for, say, twisting, turning, sitting, laughing, breathing, etc, it started getting dicey. The other interesting thing was that at least half of the pain and soreness was in my shoulders and upper back, nowhere near the incision sites, due to labroscopic surgery involving pumping the patient full of gas like a balloon. The better to see your organs with. This then leaks out very slowly. (I’ve never had people rooting for me when I burped before.)
Given that it was in all a fairly routine surgery (which I will note does not equate to a routine day in the life), they wanted to get a quick checklist done before they kicked me out.
-Can you manage the pain?
-Can you eat?
-Can you walk?
-Can you use the bathroom?
As soon as the answers to those were all yes, I was gonna be out of there. I don’t know which was more appealing, getting away from the hospital and home or letting someone else take care of food and stuff for a little longer. But despite much protesting on my part, I did eventually make it out of bed and to the bathroom before the cutoff to stay the night, so they handed me off and home we went. (It occurs to me on later reflection that in previous hospital visits, once I was out of bed and standing things got hard, so I might have been reluctant this time given how hard it was to sit up in the first place. But removing a gallbladder has different effects than dislocating your pelvis to remove a child, so different results are to be expected.)
I’m fortunate enough to have a lot of friends and family who took care of things like food and kids while I’ve been bouncing back (and even did a little writing at home once I was on forced bedrest soreness-enforced chair-rest). I’m feeling pretty normal now, which is unfortunate; I’m going to have to make sure I don’t lift anything too heavy just by habit for the next week or so.
Maybe I’ll do a little heavy-lifting on writing. I hope I can. My current goal is to finish the outline/rough draft hodgepodge I’m writing up for Astronautica by the end of November as a sort of Pseudo-Wri-Mo. Current progress has me hopeful.
For now, *waves enthusiastically from big easy chair.*
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