Entries Tagged with Gallbladder Surgery
April 10th, 2007
I’ve been meaning to stop by for weeks now and let everyone know that I’m alive and well.
(Ironically when I tried to stop by to leave a note, the server was down… grrrr)
Lots of changes going on around here, lots of stuff to deal with.
I’ve had my surgery now. It went very well. The surgeon said that my gallbladder was very inflamed and, of course, full of stones when they removed it (through my belly button — how?) and that I was lucky they removed it when they did. Well, duh! No one listens to me.
My recovery also went very well, except for my mother’s apparent obsession with my personal plumbing. 
It did take me about 3 or 4 days to get everything going again and I admit that was quite painful and uncomfortable in the meantime.
My mother, being the taskmaster that she is, the nurse who never let me stay home sick as a child, had me hanging curtains in the guest room 3 days after surgery. So, I didn’t really start resting until after she went home a week after surgery.
I have to say that the two weeks of recovery that I spent at home away from the stress of dealing with all the crazy people at work was the best medicine ever. I really needed that break. I came back so incredibly relaxed and with an entirely different outlook.
The environment at work is incredibly different now. During the month(s) leading up to my surgery, things had gotten completely out of control, Lord of the Flies out-of-control.
I have mentioned on this blog how frustrated I was about my problems with FW and in particular MJ and how unprofessional their behavior was to me. The closer it got to the deadline of our project — Daylight Saving Time (March 11th), the more certain I was that MJ was actually working against me, keeping me from getting my work done. Looking back now, a month later, I don’t know that she consciously did it, but I do know that I still feel that she didn’t support me and didn’t help me and certainly didn’t give me the respect of a peer. I know that she didn’t treat me the way I would have treated her if things had been reversed and I have come to realize that more than anything this so-called team, works more against itself than together.
In fact, I specifically asked GE on one occasion to help me with testing after he told me he literally had nothing to do because his projects were on hold and he was just sitting at his desk reading articles. He actually told me “Hell, no.”
My project didn’t make the deadline because of lack of support within my own department. It still is sitting waiting to go live, waiting approval from another division within the department. Every other person who needed to sign off on it has — all outside of this department — but our own department couldn’t make it a priority to meet our own deadline and my director who I report to won’t push the subject with the manager of the person — the manager reports to him. Yet, this project was my director’s priority. Suposedly.
I was so completely stressed out that I literally wanted to quit on March 10th. I just felt like a failure because I hadn’t made my deadline and no matter what I did I couldn’t get my project to budge forward for weeks. Then it suddenly occurred to me — I had done the best job I could do; I can’t control anyone but myself. All of those other people are outside of my authority, out of my control. All I can do is know that they are crazy.
That made me feel a little better, but still I needed a break and the two weeks I was recovering from surgery and didn’t have any contact with anyone helped.
GE has become come some sort of self-appointed hall monitor of the interface engines, making up rules for how he wants things configured and set up and childishly harassing the rest of us through nasty emails until we do things his way. He has also said some pretty nasty things in email about people on our team, not on our team, and even our boss and cc’d pretty much everyone and then he was sent to training and told no one about it until he got there. There was quite a bit of resentment on the part of the rest of the Interface Team because everyone has been asking to go to training for over a year and no one could get a straight answer out of our boss, who is the department director. (Note, our “team” does not have a manager to report to.)
Somewhere in there, there was a procedural disagreement between GE and FW that turned into a very childish argument that turned into a tattletale email where GE recounted the whole conversation with a so-there attitude and demanded that the director make this tiny procedural decision. Mind you, that one of FW’s biggest complaints is that the director hasn’t made an actual decision concerning us in a year and FW commented that the director would never make a decision about coding procedure. Well, he did and he made it in GE’s favor. Fifteen minutes after that email went out, FW quit.
His last day is May 18th. Now we’re trying to sort out FW’s projects, which GE sent an email saying he absolutely would not take on (right before he went to training without telling any of the rest of the “team”, which is why everyone is pissed off that he’s being rewarded for bad behavior — he gets to go to training so he can not work some more?), and how we’re going to divide up his duty officer call. There’s talk about how we might try to hire someone from with-in and train him.
There has even been a demand by MJ to our director that we be given a manager. She can get away with saying a lot to him because he’s married to her sister. Apparently he told her that he got tired of dealing with the Interface Team’s “personalities” so he’s been avoiding them and she told him that when you ignore dysfunctional personalities, they get worse in a cry for help. MJ and FW both tried talking to the director and tried to say that they were willing to make an effort to discuss the dysfunction in the group and talk about getting the group a manager and FW is willing to stay if an effort toward change is going to be made, but the director appears to be doing what he does best, which is ignoring the real issue.
Mind you, they aren’t the only ones who’ve been to talk to him. In the weeks before my surgery, I went to the director and I told him that the working situation was making me ill. I talked to him about the need for some sort of management involvement with the Interface Team, but he was at that time, unwilling to get involved himself.
So, FW is leaving. GE is getting my new project load. MJ is getting one of FW’s projects and I am getting FW’s biggest projects. My Daylight Savings Project remains unfinished — I sent another email yesterday reminding everyone involved that I’d like to complete it this week and it’s waiting on them. My current attitude is watch the crazy people but don’t get involved.
Tags: gallbladder surgery, work
December 18th, 2006
Looking back in hindsight, the pain actually started Wednesday night. I mistakingly thought it was due to doing to much as is sometimes the case with my fibromyalgia. I had been going through boxes. O.K. I had gone through every single unopened box left in my house from the attic eaves to the basement to the garage. Every hiding place, trying to find some missing items that I suspect my have been “taken” by either the moving men, the cable guy(s), or the phone repair man. Anyway, my back had starting hurting and I thought it was the kind of pain you get when you’ve been lifting things or bending over or reaching too high up or all three. I took some Tylenol and snuggled up with my animals on the sofa.
As I said on Thursday, I wasn’t feeling well, I had a bad day, and I thought my fibro pain was up. Physical Therapy only helped as long as I was in the warm water. Well, then my stomach started to have a sharp pain. And I got to thinking. I checked my calendar and sure enough, it was time to schedule a Depo shot. My PMSs are pretty painful. I usually get intense stomach cramping combined with backaches and migraines. I did think it was odd that I hadn’t had any migraines this week, but I was taking that as a wonderous thing and not complaining — plus I have a theory that there was mold in the walls of my old apartment that was triggering my migraines, but I digress.
By Thursday night I was pretty uncomfortable but I’d written things off to physical therapy, tired from unpacking, and PMS. I took a Tylenol with codeine and curled up with my animals on the sofa.
Friday morning the pain was extremely uncomfortable in my back. I made the appointment with my doctor’s office for the Depo but I couldn’t get in until Tuesday. I figured I’d just take a lot of Tylenol.
Besides, I didn’t have time for all of that pain, I had a lot to do at home to get ready for a holiday pot luck at my house on Sunday. Plus mailing Christmas cards and presents.
So, imagine my surprise after lunch when I was on the phone, helping a user in peril when I suddenly felt as if something were very wrong. I felt feint. I felt overheated. I felt frozen. I felt it all at once.
This would come and go. At one point, a very low point, I ended up in the women’s bathroom on the floor, laying on my back, reveling in all that is the coolness of the bathroom tile. For the next hour or so, I would go slowly and wobly back and forth between my co-worker BM’s desk and my desk trying to decide if I were going to go to the ER or not. Lots of decisions needed to be weighed after all. Pugly was at daycare. The cats were at home. How would I get home. I felt like I was dying. The pain was getting worse. I was now gagging but unable to throw up and unable to poopie as I tell Pugly.
After collapsing in BM’s cubicle in pain, she took me to the ER and I called the daycare and made arrangements for Pugly to spend the night and the spoiled cats would just have to wait for dinner.
I arrived sometime after 3pm, but I didn’t get into a room/bed until almost 6pm. I was reunited with a friend who was able to get me into an overflow bed after 3 hours in the waiting room, I didn’t see a doctor for another hour and a half. They sent me to Ultrasound where they probed the most tender areas with cold, wet, gelled, round paddle that’s just the right size to be a torture implement. They have to press into the tender area good to get the best picture, you know.
It then took over another hour to see the doctor again, but he says that I probably have passed a gallstone. He thinks that Surgeon back in August that didn’t want to remove my Gallbladder may want to reconsider now. Apparently the duct leading away from the Gallbladder is definitely enlarged now.
I had to drive home before I could take any painkillers. That’s right! I suffered the nightmare without the morphine drip they offered me in the hospital. I am such a responsible adult, damnit! I couldn’t concentrate on anything but the pain, but I did what I had to. Honestly, I don’t know how I made it home. It was unusually foggy too. I could barely see. More than once, I thought about pulling over just to take a painkiller.
When I got home, the Oxycodone the doctor gave me, did nothing. Nothing. I thought I was going to die. I couldn’t find a way to get comfortable. I spent the next five or six hours moving, shift, changing positions, wishing I would throw up, trying to find some magical, miracle position where there was no pain, no queasiness, no pressure, no agony.
I almost called the ambulance to take me back at 2am.
I finally decided to just lay still on my back because there was no position that was comfortable. I guess maybe I fell asleep at 3am.
The agonizing pain had receded by the time I woke up around 8am. The queasiness is still with me even now. Bleh.
I ended up having to postpone my potluck and I haven’t wrapped my Christmas presents to mail. I hope they make it to New Mexico by Christmas. I still have presents to buy actually.
I did get my Christmas tree up, but that’s about it.
(Click for larger view.)
Tags: Gallbladder Surgery, ER, agony
August 3rd, 2006
Well, I saw the surgeon yesterday and it’s taken me a while to digest what he had to say. Really I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.
The surgeon told me that he’s not going to do the surgery; he’s not convinced that it will relieve my symptoms. Yes, I have gallstones and they are indeed all sitting in there hanging about, but there’s no proof that they are menacing me in any way, he said. Apparently, he thinks my symptoms are from “something else”.
You know, that mysterious ellusive “something else” that has been haunting and taunting and traumatizing me for 20 years or so.
So…
He is recommending to my GP that I see a Gastroenterologist as he thinks I might have Irritable Bowel Syndrome, bringing me full circle. I guess he saw the look of frustration on my face.
O.K. Let’s face it. IBS is what they tell people they have when doctors basically don’t know what else is wrong and have no idea what else to try. The next thing you know, you’re on muscle relaxants and some special diet that’s either super low-fiber or super-high fiber and they just toy with that until you give up and stop going to see them and pretend you can live with it.
And my last Gastroenterologist was a complete quack. I really have little faith in the specialty. I didn’t care for him or his partners. After my upper GI, I had to page one of his partners due to a discomfort I felt after hours and the partner on call was quite rude and condescending.
Mind you, that was down in New Orleans and all of the doctors I’ve encountered here in Maine have been wonderful, but I’m still a bit wary.
But the surgeon must have seen my discomfort. He started on a spiel about how a lot has changed in the last 10 years or so in the field and how they’ve discovered a lot about IBS and how to treat it and how it’s no longer treated by fiddling with a person’s fiber in their diet.
Anyway, he did say that if I see the GI and the GI says it’s the gallstones that are the problem, he’ll do the surgery, but I guess he wants the second opinion. It makes sense.
So for now I get to keep all of my body parts.
Still, I feel very frustrated. It feels like a huge step backward for me. Like I was so close to finding a solution and the answer slipped through my fingertips like sand. I so want to know what it’s like for other people. How do they go through their day? What’s it like not to have to worry about where the bathrooms are or whether or not you’ll even go today? What’s it like to feel like your body isn’t betraying you?
Tags: wellness, gastroenterologist, gallbladder surgery, gallstones, IBS
July 28th, 2006
- Today is not such a good day for me pain-wise. The pain really started two nights ago and has just sort of gotten worse and worse. I’ve tried treating it with Tylenol and Aleve per the GP’s recommendation, but that doesn’t seem to be helping. This morning has been so bad that it feels like my left calf is hard as a rock and every step is agony. It’s just bizare.
- My eye is twitching again. It’s really very annoying.
- I finally have an appointment to see a Rheumatologist. It’s scheduled for next Tuesday. Of course, that’s just the initial consult. Who knows what kind of testing he’ll put me through or how long that’ll take.
- I see the surgeon on Wednesday and having asked around I seem to have been refered to “the best”. Now I’m just waiting to see if he’ll do the surgery and if so, if he’ll do it with the tiny microscopic holes or the big nasty scar. I’m a little annoyed at El’s comment when she was comparing her surgery to mine — “At least you’ll have your health when you start”…I really wanted to say that if I had my health, I wouldn’t need the surgery, but I kept my mouth shut -er - fingers quiet.
- I’m meeting with a possible house-cleaner on Sunday morning. I’ve said that this fatigue thing is just too much and I can’t keep up with work and house keeping and do other stuff; heck, half the time, I barely can do just work. So, I’ve been looking for someone and I found this person on Craigslist. She’s coming over on Sunday morning to look around and give me references and discuss what needs to be done.
Basically, I want someone in once a week to vacuum, sweep, mop, clean the bathrooms, empty the trash, and wipe down the kitchen counters and every other week dust. I’ll do the laundry, dishes, litterboxes, and picking up.
Tags: house keeper, fibromyalgia, gallbladder surgery, wellness
July 25th, 2006
J: Really, you have nothing to worry about. Those kinds of surgeries are done every day and everything’s fine. It’s like when you had LASIK.
Me: LASIK? Do you actually remember when I had LASIK?
J: um….
Me: There was all this pain? Most painful thing I did to myself on purpose? There was a problem with the surgery done on my right eye? I had to have the surgery redone 6 months later? The recovery was longer than everyone else?
J: Um… oh, yeah. Never mind. This will be better.
Me: Great now my eye is twitching.
Really, I think she meant well…
Damn, my eye is twitching again.
Tags: gallbladder surgery, LASIK
July 20th, 2006
My shrink challenged me last Tuesday to imagine waking up well one morning. Obviously, not completely well, but free of certain symptoms like my GI issues. For instance, I’ve had some sort of GI issue or another since I was 18 years old. I don’t really remember what life was like for my body prior to that.
What would it be like to wake up one morning and not have “issues”?
Coincidentally, the last two days, as if God were trying to tell me something, I’ve had horrible stomach issues despite any kind of medication or attempts at bland foods or no foods. There’s been pain and ickiness and acid reflux. It’s been an accute reminder of what I’ve been living with for almost 20 years.
So, it’s been hard to imagine what it’d be like not to live like this, but it’s been easy to wish I didn’t have to. To not have to worry about how far the bathrooms might be or whether or not there might be anything I can have on a menu that won’t send me to one in five seconds. Although lately it seems to have no rhyme or reason. Somedays it’s everything and some days everything’s fine. It’s a random way to live life and it’s not fun.
Unfortunately, imagining not having “issues” for me is as a much of a struggle as I used to have when I tried to imagine myself thin before I lost all of my weight that first time. I just couldn’t fathom that. Now for some odd reason, when I try to picture myself well, I always picture myself thin. Not quite the same but to my mind’s eye, that’s what it represents.
In fact, I kind of believe that maybe once my GI issues are worked out, I’ll be able to eat the healthy foods I like and need to eat to lose weight on a program regularly without discomfort and will be able to stick to it easier. There’s an encouragement to eating wheat pasta, brown rice and more raw veggies and beans when they aren’t so discomforting coming back out 30 minutes to an hour later. I could see that as a benefit.
Anway, last night, I was given the choice to have the surgery or not. It’s not an emergency. The choice is mine as to whether I want to live with the pain and discomfort. I have chosen to have the surgery, though I’m very depressed and scared about the whole thing. My mother will come take care of me and I’m going to try to schedule it for September when it’s cooler, but really I haven’t talked to the surgeon yet. I’m currently waiting for the initial appointment to be set up with the surgeon.
I’m still trying to imagine waking up well. Not sure what that feels like or what I’ll do.
Tags: wellness, gallbladder surgery, acid reflux, GI
July 18th, 2006
I had my ultrasound this morning. My spleen, my kidneys, and my liver didn’t betray me, but my gallbladder…
I’ve always prided myself on being all original parts and all in one piece, except for my wisdom teeth — I had no control over that. My parents were still in co-ownership of my person at that time.
Now, apparently I have gallstones. The tech told me that they’re caused by dairy, which doesn’t make sense to me since dairy is supposed to be one of those things nutritionists tell us we need more of. Granted, WebMD says the gallstones happen when “cholesterol and other substances in the bile form crystals that become hard stones” and cholesterol is a fatty substance found in meat and dairy products. So, the tech was kind of right, I guess.
Anyway, apparently, I have too many of these gallstones, but the good news is that they’ve not travelled anywhere. It’s plain to see that the ducts leading away from the gallbladder haven’t been “dialated” as the tech put it. He said once a stone has been through one, they can’t shrink back down and mine all look normal.
More than likely, my acid reflux and other GI problems are being caused by the irregular release of the bile from my gallbladder because of the stones hanging about in there. They’re just clogging things up. And apparently you can’t break them up once they’ve formed. The only way to get rid of gallstones is to remove the gallbladder.
Or course, my concern was: “Don’t I need my gallbladder?” I mean, God put it there for a reason, didn’t he? I’m always a little wary when anyone starts talking about removing organs because it seems to me that they serve a purpose that I might need if they’re gone.
Apparently, your liver just takes over the functionality — though there are some dietary changes you have to make — or rather, as I recall with Red, there are some you’re supposed to make. With her, there was a lot of “I’m not supposed to eat this, you know!” 
And I just know that my mother is dying to tell me “I told you so!” For a month she’s been going on and on about how much simpler gallbladder surgery is now than it was when Red had it, like she’s wishing it on me or something. Damn her. Well, she better be prepared to come take care of me and fetch me comfort food and feed my animals and clean the litter boxes. hehehehehe
Anyway, nothing’s set in stone, so to speak. I still have to go back and discuss it all with my GP, who probably hasn’t even seen the ultrasound pictures yet herself.
Tags: acid reflux, gallstones, gallbladder surgery
