Two weeks ago,Sunday night, I experienced the worst, most unrelenting pain I have ever felt in my life. Since all my children were hatched, not born, I have no reference point to say whether it was worse or less intense than labor. All I know is that it was the worst thing I have ever personally felt. The killer part was that there was no let up, no respite for a solid 12 hours. I couldn't breathe much more than short, shallow breaths, the pain was too intense. I couldn't lie down, I couldn't sit up, I couldn't walk, it was a nightmare. All.Night.Long! Finally, at around 8:30 am, the pain just went away and I was able to fall into a deep and most welcome sleep…for a couple of hours anyway. I decided that maybe I had just had really bad heartburn, so I didn't eat anything for most of the day and the pain stayed gone.
I had called my mom in the middle of the night my time, to ask her what her gall bladder attack felt like. I knew I wasn't having a heart attack, the pain was below my heart, not in it. But she said her pain was mostly in her back, and mine was all in my front, across my whole abdomen. So, again, I figured it was serious heartburn and forgot about it. My mom, however, is still my mom, even though I am almost 39 and live on the other side of the world, or maybe it's because I love on the other side of the world, at any rate, she worries about me. So she called Dr. Tom, also known as my big brother, and asked him what he thought. He got very worried, and asked her to tell me to please call A.S.A.P. So I did.
In going over all my symptoms and whatnot, he came up with three pretty viable diagnoses: heart attack, gall stones, or really bad indigestion. He was leaning more towards heart attack or gall stones, though. Apparently, they can do a test at the hospital to see if you have had a heart attack, but it has to be within 24 hours. So, we went off to the ER just to be safe. I didn't think it was that, deep down, but better to be sure.
They poked and prodded my belly, asked me a bunch of questions, and hemmed and hawed about taking a blood test. They listened to my heart, my belly, my lungs, all kinds of stuff, and then hemmed and hawed some more. I mentioned that I already had a doctor's appointment for the next morning for something unrelated and that seemed to relieve them very much. You see, the lab guy had already gone home and they would need to call him back to run the tests, and they really didn't want to do that. The Swiss take their quitting time pretty seriously. :) They decided it was probably just a gastrointestinal flu, and that I would most likely feel off for a couple more days, and then be fine. But if it was anything serious, my regular doctor would take blood the next morning and find it himself.
This reassured me greatly. I went home, had a bowl of muesli because by this point I was starving, and told my brother all was well. But about an hour or so later, the pain started up again. Horrible, excruciating, not letting up for a second pain. Oh, and when I was brushing my teeth, I thought I Iooked kind of green. But Chris assured me I was not green. I slept sitting up on the couch, and actually got to sleep around 3 am or so. Much better than the night before, but not much fun either.
The next morning, while we were brushing our teeth, Chris noticed that I did look rather odd. He held his arm up to mine and said "You're not green! You're yellow!" I looked closer in the mirror, and yes, even my eyeballs were rather yellow. But it was all good, I mean, I was off to the doctor, he would fix me right up. hahahahaha
I was already wary of this particular doctor, as he had diagnosed me with gestational diabetes during my last pregnancy, scared the crud out of me, then offered me no advice other than to join his special eating plan (not covered by insurance, naturally) which consisted of eating one meal a day, all protein. Uh yeah, you did happen to notice I was PREGNANT, right?!? But I digress…
Since our insurance requires us to go to this particular doctor, at least until the end of the year, I really didn't have much choice. I explained to him about the pain on Sunday and Monday nights, what the ER doc said, and then asked him if I looked yellow to him. He took a perfunctory glance at me and said, "No. You just need to eat healthier. You eat too much fruit and not enough protein. I have this great eating plan you can join after the summer, it will fix you right up." OH.MY.FREAKING.GOSH! So I nodded, smiled and walked out, committing to nothing. That afternoon, when I was now bright yellow, like Violet Beauregard in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory yellow, I had Chris come home early from work, and he took me back to the ER.
The admitting nurse asked me why I was there. I calmly said, "Um, I'm yellow?" "Oh, right, well go on back then." hahaha They finally took some blood, and discovered that I was very sick indeed. There is some pancreatic fluid level in your blood that they measured. Normally it is under 100, mine was over 4,000. They started me on iv antibiotics, and did an ultrasound to confirm their suspicions. My gallbladder was full of stones, and one had entered the digestive tract, and gotten stuck right in the spot where the liver and the pancreas empty into the intestines. This was causing major blockage, hence my sunshiney hue. The pain I had experienced earlier was the stone moving around my system.
They wanted to wait and see if the stone would move on it's own, because removing it would require taking me to another hospital where they had the proper equipment to get it out. One of those camera on the end of a grabby hook things. Thankfully, the stone eventually moved on it's own, and by Thursday the infection caused by it was cleared up enough for them to operate and remove my gall bladder. The surgery itself was totally no big deal; four tiny incisions, no catheter (I HATE those things), and some more fun pain pills. By Saturday, I was more than ready to come home. They did tell me not to pick up anything over 15 kilos for two weeks, so I avoided picking up Alexandra for about 6 days, and then I was good to go. 🙂
During my time in the hospital, the awesome, amazing women in our ward brought over a hot meal every day for my family. Chris was able to work from home, (I love his boss) so they were being supervised and the house was sort of being maintained, but he definitely cannot cook. The knowledge that they were getting good food brought to them everyday was a huge relief to me. They would even call and tell me what
things were their favorites, and to ask me to please, please, please get the recipe so I could make it again. Also, on Wednesday, Jenna came and cleaned my kitchen spic-spec, then the next Monday she came and folded a bunch of my laundry and put it away. Good friends are worth a million bucks.
Well, what was it?!