An Unexpected Hospital Adventure

I had to have emergency surgery on Monday.

It was not how I wanted to start the week, and it’s certainly not something I wanted to miss three days of work for. But praise the Lord, it went as well as it possibly could have.

I was visiting my stepdad over the weekend, and on Sunday evening, the day before I meant to go home, I started having severe stomach pains. I’d had such pains before, but they never kept me from sleeping like they did this time. So after hours of debating as I writhed in pain, I knocked on his door at 5am and said I needed to go to the emergency room.

This could not have happened at a better time and place. Not only was the hospital a 5-minute drive away, but my mom used to work there, she had several surgeries there, it’s where she was treated for her life-threatening pneumonia, and my stepdad had just finished a term on the board of directors. I was not going to get better care anywhere else on the planet.

After hours of tests and waiting (including my first-ever ultrasound), the doctors reported that I had a stone in my gall bladder. [Click the link if you don’t know what the gall bladder does and you want to know.] They strongly recommended surgery that day. The hospital’s top (teaching) surgeon was contacted, as was the hospital’s top anesthesiologist. The nurse that took care of me during the day on Monday and Tuesday, Krissy, was awesomeness on toast. I had the surgery in the early evening on Monday, and then was discharged by noon Tuesday.

Since then, I’ve been getting better every day. Today (Thursday) I returned to work after 3 days off, because the pain is no longer distracting and the fogginess of the Vicodin is out of my system. My belly is still very sore, but that is where I have five stab wounds where they sucked out an internal organ, so that’s to be expected. It still feels like I have a demon clawing its way out of my intestines whenever I cough, but I’m sure that’s normal too. I have not lacked for medical advice from the bajillion nurses that I know, both in and out of my family. My mother checked my stitches and said they all look “good,” if stitches can look “good.” They look gross to me, but there’s a difference between “regular, normal gross because WOUNDS” and “oh good lord it’s terribly infected, back to the ER with you” gross.

Now, my friend Lisa said on Facebook that she was “hoping that this unfortunate incident becomes another great Emily story with a happy ending.” And so far she is right: I do have stories that are hopefully not the “you had to be there” type. (Some of them involve cute guys…everyone appreciates those, right?)

But I wrote out this whole post and now I’m tired, so I’m going to save the more entertaining anecdotes for later.