sans gallbladder

On Friday I had my gallbladder removed. After stories from Nikki and a few people at work, I was scared but determined to get through it. The immediate post-surgical experience was pretty horrible. I had never had anesthesia before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. There needs to be another word, because nausea does not cover what I experienced. I'm not sure how long the actual surgery took, but I went in at 1030am and the first time I felt well enough to notice the time it was 430pm. Poor N, waiting for me to come out of it. I was in recovery, feeling horrible, hearing snitches of the nurses talking about how they wanted to admit me because I hadn't come out of it yet. Close call. But they tried something that finally worked, I started being able to sit up, and then they wanted me to sit in a chair. Horrible. As soon as I got in it, I just wanted to get out and go home. When I finally did get home, I slept until 1130 the next morning. (Although I got up almost hourly for the first six or so to pee...damned IV fluids.)

The good news is that after that I recovered pretty quickly. I found out after only two doses that Dilaudid does ntohing for me, but there wasn't much pain anyway, and Tylenol handled it. The worst was the shoulder pain, from the cardon dioxide, which I was warned about and those people weren't kidding. I tried to turn over in the middle of the second night and suddenly I felt like someone stabbed my shoulder with a screwdriver and then twisted, over and over again. But that only lasted a few days. The incisions are pretty painless. The one in my belly button opened up, but I saw the surgeon yesterday and he says it's fine. He signed off on me going to back to work today, which is great because I already had a ton to do when I got there, so imagine what a few more days would have been like.

My surgeon has no sense of humor, but I suppose that's not what you want in a surgeon. Yesterday he and his nurse were in the room when I asked about my belly button incision. I told them it's N's greatest fear that his belly button will open up and his innards will fall out. So when I told him that I thought my incision had opened, he freaked out. The nurse was cracking up, but the surgeon said with a straight face, "You would die before that happened." No, really? At least he's good at his job.

And N is a wonderful nurse, of course. But I'm happy to be on the road to recovery...