When they sent me home one day after my surgery, I thought my problems with my stomach had been solved. Boy was I wrong. I was back in he hospital emergency room within 48 hours of being sent home. I had an obstruction and had the pleasure of a hose being shoved up my nose and down the back of my throat to purge what was in my stomach by way if this rather large hose.
After this was done, I was till experiencing a lot of pain; they did extensive nuclear scanning of my gallbladder to make sure I did not have gall stones. To my relief the did discover the stones and I thought, well, at least all this will be over with once the remove my gallbladder. Wrong again. the jerk ass surgeon I had, informed me that most everyone had gall stones and that mine would remain. I was sort of relived because he really was a jerk ass surgeon with no bedside manners at all and I really did not want to have him operating on me again.
Fast forward one year. Thursday June 11th was a rather normal day. i worked, came home, grilled steaks and had a yogurt for dessert. I even played a little 2 Live Crew and danced around a little. I fell asleep on the sofa and woke up around 1 a.m. to move to the bedroom. I noticed that my stomach was hurting, like someone was punching me in my stomach and would not take their fist out. I tried to move around and ignore it, even stuck my finger down my throat, made myself sick and thought I would feel better. Wrong again.
Finally around 4:30 a.m. I decided that I could not take the pain any longer. I got dressed and drove myself to the emergency room where I waited for about 3 1/2 hours to be seen. I filled them in on the appendix episode from the previous year, informed them of the gall stones that I knew I had and hoped they would be able to relive some of the excruciating pain I was having. Here's the problem with emergency rooms; they want to get you in and out as soon a possible, I'm convinced they get something for a quick catch and release program. I however was not going so quietly this time around. I told them I was leaving the country in a few weeks and I really wanted to get to the bottom of what this pain was. They ran some more nuclear scans on my stomach and did a few ultra sounds to eliminate things one by one. The surgeon that was on call that day made the decision that my gallbladder should come out, since I had, had a few bouts with it over the last several years, getting worse and longer each time. The thing with a gallbladder attack is that sometimes they last ten minutes, sometimes they last longer; way longer as I learned.
I was rushed up to surgery Friday night and the whole thing was over in about an hour. The whole thing being, the surgery, not the pain or recovery.
They wanted to send me home the next day, which would have been fine and dandy, had I felt better. I was still not passing gas or having any sort of b.m. (yuck, i know). I insisted that I was not ready to go home and that I should stay until I had a b.m., they were reluctant about it, but I insisted because I had already gone that route the previous year with my appendix, being right back at the e.r. two days later. I DID NOT want to be back in that boat again. It's like starting all over from step one again.
Let me tell you, thank God I was an insistent little prick, because, just as I had suspected, I had a terrible episode with the gas pressures that were pumped into my stomach for the surgery. I was literally laying on the floor crying like a baby in excruciating pain. At least now, I was already in the hospital and relief would be sooner than starting all over in the e.r.. It still took a good little while (maybe an hour) to really start getting something for the pain, because they had to put a call in to the dr. to see what they had permission to give me.
In the end, they (well one of the dr.'s) admitted that they started me on solid foods, way too soon.
I'm still laying in the hospital now, waiting on the gas to pass, I swear, I'm not letting them send me out before I think it's safe to go. Wish me luck.
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