The week of the gall bladder

It has been quite a week at the Drysdale house. It started last Thursday. My stomach wasn't feeling just right in the evening, but I thought I'd wake up feeling better on Friday morning. It wasn't so. I spent the day in bed on Friday with back pain and nausea. I was disappointed to feel the same way on Saturday as we had made plans to go to the beach with some friends. As one of our only "available" weekends of the summer I hated to spend it in bed but that's what I did. By Sunday, I was feeling more myself so we attended the annual Moore family reunion and squeezed in a visit with my brother and his family.

And then it hit me. Sunday night I woke up about 3:30am with what I knew was a gall bladder attack. I've had a number of attacks over the past year or so but none were this bad or lasted this long. We decided around 7am I should go to the ER so, we dropped Cody off at school and Devin took me into London. We were in his work truck and each bump along the way caused me to moan in agony.

I arrived at the ER looking pretty disheveled - hot water bottle in tow.  Fortunately they could see my anguish as we only waited about 10 minutes in the waiting room before being called in to a bed. I saw a lot of people in a short time - nurses, interns, residents, ultrasound ops, etc. Through several ultrasounds they determined I had a lot of gall stones and one was in the neck of my gall bladder - which was causing the pain. I'm not sure if the doctor that did the original bedside ultrasound dislodged the stone or not but the pain seemed to settle down after he completed the first scan.

Bumped into my old friend Nick on my way home! :)

My sister Jo-Anne came to spend her day off with me while Devin went to work. It was such a comfort to have her there - she even brought me a nice warm blanket as it was freezing at the hospital! She thinks of questions that I never would and ensured I was taken care of. She also drove me home and settled me in before heading out.

I was so relieved when they told me I'd be having the surgery on Thursday. I actually had a consultation on July 11 with a surgeon, but I knew it would be more waiting after the initial appointment. So, to have this dealt with within a few days was wonderful. And it actually ended up happening a day early! They called and asked me not to eat after midnight on Tuesday night in hopes they could get me in on Wednesday.

I went to work on Wednesday morning and sure enough, at 9:30 I got the call and was off to the hospital. Of course, I had made all my arrangements for Thursday.... Mom was going to be with me at the hospital and bring me home, Randy was going to pick Cody up from school and take him home.... a day early had me scrambling. However, I'm surrounded by great people that help out in time of need. Randy came a day early and looked after Cody and though my mom couldn't come to the hospital, she spent the day with me at home on Thursday and made sure I was resting comfortably.

Flowers from John & Karen (left) and Mom & Dad (right)

My dad had his gall bladder out when I was a kid. It was a big deal. He was in the hospital for about a week and still has a big scar. I'm happy to say things have changed. They now do the surgery laparoscopically so I went home just hours after the surgery and will have very minimal - if any - scarring. It's not my ideal way of spending Canada 150 but I'm grateful for the way things timed out and now have this behind me.