Parting with parts...

Ouch.
That is the theme of what happens when it turns out your gallbladder has hundreds of tiny and several large stones mining themselves inside that little bile producing sac.

Last Friday, I woke up early and thought I had the sudden onset of flu. Barfbarfbarfbarfbarf, for about 15 hours with terrible muscle aching in my back and abdomen. The most relevant event at the time was my new, close relationship with my dark green plastic wastepaper basket that allowed me to stay miserably in bed and puke as opposed to staying miserably attached to the commode from 5 in the morning till after 9 that night. Then, it stopped. Every sip of water stopped revealing itself once again. It was then I was left with the major symptom of an angry, twisting pain in my upper right stomach area. I could tell it was not my stomach. I suspected maybe my liver was over thar, but didn't know for sure. I still thought maybe it was the flu, but it was unlike any flu I'd had before. Although, fever and chills were part of the recipe, so there I was. Saturday, the pain was worse and still isolated in the one area. I stayed in bed all day, took a Vicodin I had on hand in case of severe back pain, but it did not do much good. By Saturday evening, I knew something wasn't right so I crawled outta bed and googled a couple of words of my symptoms. Up at the top came "gallbladder." I looked at two sites and was a classic case of having an inflammed and probably stoned gb. I made a silent deal with the god of gallbladders, basically vowing to go to the e.r. in the morning if I wasn't any better.

I arrived at the e.r. which is about 5 minutes away from my home at about 6:30am in a lot of pain. Within four hours, I had been poked, prodded, ultrasounded and told I needed to be admitted and hooked up to an I.V. I was also given the good news about being able to receive pain meds (turned out to be morphine) via the IV in the process. The ultrasound guy, who they had to drag out of bed on a Sunday morning, pointed out my goldmine of stones on the screen a short while earlier...so I knew they were there, but was a bit surprised that I would be admitted so quickly. And never do you want a sip of water more than when you are told you cannot.

So my surgery was scheduled for Monday afternoon. They were able to do it laproscopically, so the incisions are just five small scratches. The discomfort is a world better than having to be sliced open. I was released Tuesday morn and today, Thursday, got my staples removed. It was a breeze.

Of course it was shocking and a bit traumatizing and quite painful, but mostly I am just grateful at the timing of it all. Obviously those stones had been there awhile. I could have had the attack in Italy just a few weeks ago. Or a bit later in May and I would have been drowning in work. But no, the timing was quite perfect and for that I thank the gods for scheduling my gallbladder attack just right. Seriously.

I am however now officially out of (easily) expendable, internal body parts.
So, there is my tale of having a gallbladder and then not having a gallbladder, that I barely even knew existed. Took it for granted I did. And knew even less about its role in my digestive system that is of course till it was too late and we had irreconcilable differences.

Amazingly just about everyone I have come across in the medical community (aka nurses) has an Xgallbladder in their past. It is like I have joined some secret cult. They all told me how much better I'd feel with it being gone. They are right. It becomes easy to hold a major grudge against a body part that can and will cause you so much pain. Who needs em??!!!