so, the gall bladder thing...i'd been having mild throbbing pains in my upper right abdomen for a week, but monday night at work they just became horrendous - i left work early to go to the hospital. for some reason, i went to community hospital, the one near my house...they seem to have a differing view of "emergency", nobody was in a hurry to get anything done...so 45 minutes goes by before i get into a room...then a while passes before i see a doc...he says he wants pee and blood, so i give it to him...he comes back and says it's probably gall bladder, but can't be sure since they don't have an ultrasound at night - what the hell? 3+ hours in the er...so i head to mom's with my vicodin rx and sleep till i can call the doc's office. call the doc's office, they get me in at 1pm - doc tells me to go to st. francis south to get an ultrasound done. go to st. francis south and get the ultrasound (which hurt like a bitch! oh, you have pain here? lemme press harder!) and they tell me i have to go to the er at st. francis beech grove immediately, they're ready for me, and dr. mandelbaum will evaluate me for surgery there. momma takes me to st. francis and i ask for dr. mandelbaum and they ask which one - apparently there's two, they're brothers in the same practice - and i tell them doc english told me "dr. mandelbaum"...they find out it's jonathan and get me hooked up to the morphine pump and set up in a regular room. the surgery was scheduled for wednesday, the next day. in the meantime, i went from no liquids to a solid liquid diet - i tell ya, the jello/apple juice/chicken broth/raspberry popsicle combo was a four-course gourmet meal! until i puked it up, that is, then it was a rainbow - red jello, blue popsicle and i'm assuming bile (it was green) made for quite a color combo! mom had raved about the wonderfullness of the morphine pump - i thought it was okay, but i wasn't screaming its praises like mom did...

so, wednesday rolls around and i head to surgery in the afternoon...i remember being in the surgery room and having a gas mask put over my face...then nothing, till i was back in my room, screaming and writhing in pain. they kept telling me to stop and breathe, that it wouldn't hurt so much - i kept trying to catch my breath, but it hurt so much...i had to ask mom for a recap, since i was pretty fuzzy on the events...she told me the surgery took about 45 minutes and there were no complications. i woke up in excruiciating pain, and i had to pee...we buzzed the nurses 3 times before they came...it was more difficult getting out of bed than before the surgery because they'd hooked up these things on my legs, to prevent blood clots...so i had the two things hooked to my legs, an iv with two plugs, oxygen and a drain from my belly to contend with...once i peed, the pain lessened quite a bit...at some point, someone from work called - still not sure who it was...they asked how things went, and i told them it "hurt like a motherfucker" - right in front of my mother and the nurses!! all i remember was the pain - oh damn, it hurt!! but once i got back to sleep and woke up again, i was okay...still pretty sore, but much better...i stayed in the hospital through friday...doc mandelbaum had come in 6:30 friday morning and i said i didn't think i was ready to go home, but he said he thought i was, if my stats got better by the end of the day...i was too asleep to argue...so friday evening i got out and now i've just been hanging at mom's...i find if i sit up for too long, i get dizzy, or nauseous, or both...not sure if i'll be out of work one week or two, we'll see what the doc says...