Bye Bye Gallbladder

While we were in Hawaii I started to have nausea. I was pretty sure I was not pregnant and could not figure out what was causing the nausea. Then sometime towards the end of February I awoke in the middle of the night to a very strange pain in my abdomen. The pain got progressively worse and by early morning I told Forrest we had to go to the Emergency Room. We dropped Rylee off to my brother and sister-in-law and drove to the ER. As we arrived in the parking lot the pain started to go away. I felt silly walking into the ER since my abdomen was now just tender and not in excruciating pain. But Forrest said better safe than sorry. They listened to my symptoms and did an ultrasound right away to confirm that I had lots of gallstones in my gallbladder. I guess it is pretty hard to actually pass a gallstone but they sometimes get stuck in the duct/neck and cause this horrible pain. I was lucky that my gallbladder relaxed and dropped the stone back into my gallbladder. If it was still blocking the duct it would have been emergency surgery.

So instead I was able to plan my surgery and take time to learn exactly what a gallbladder is and why we can live without it. I could explain to you, but I think it is better that you do your own research in case I do not explain it well. What I will share is they do not know why some people get gallstones and some do not. They believe it is hereditary (my mom had her gallbladder removed). Pregnancy hormones can increase production of gallstones. Once you have had a "gallbladder attack" there is a 70% chance you will have future attacks so they just recommend that you have surgery to remove it. The Mayo Clinic website said that it is one of the most common surgeries in the US. Who knew? So I am one of the people in the "in crowd" who elected to have the surgery.

I had surgery Monday morning. I was a little worried as a day or two before surgery my sister-in-law said that a mom on her son's baseball team had her gallbladder removed and was out of commission for like a month. I was told it was a week recovery, but after my experience with my foot surgery I was worried that the surgeon had just down played the recovery time. I have a little girl depending on me to care for her.

I went into surgery at 10AM and by 12:30PM the hospital was practically pushing me out the door. It was hard for me to believe that I was ready to go home. I told them I did not feel up to getting dressed so they let me go home in the hospital gown. The nurse gave my dad & I instructions not to lift Rylee until I get an ok from my surgeon in my post op visit. But I was ok to shower and eat normal meals that night. Not too shabby.

The added drama for the day was that my mom had oral surgery that morning as well. So...my mom watched Rylee while Forrest & my dad checked me into the hospital. Then Forrest left to get Rylee and my brother Tim took my mom for her oral surgery. My dad stayed with me through the surgery & recovery and then Forrest & Rylee picked me up and took me home. My dad could then go home and take care of my mom. It was a little tricky coordinating what was going to work best to take care of everyone. But the day went well. Forrest really wanted to be with me at the hospital, but they had told me to plan on being in recovery for 2-3 hours so I told Forrest I did not want to worry about Rylee and would feel better if he was with her instead. Many thanks to my dad for being away from his sweetheart to wait at the hospital with me, I knew he would rather of been with her that day. And of course thank you to Tim for taking care of mom. And I guess a shout out to my sister Brittany who was willing to take mom and planning on taking mom until she found out how long my mom's procedure would last and needed to be at school before mom would be going home.

Recovery has been much better than I expected. My mom has a huge scar down her belly from getting her gallbladder removed. I am so glad that they can now do the procedure with laparoscopic surgery so that I only have 4 little incisions. I have been pretty sore. Kind of feels like I was punched many times in the abdomen. Yesterday I started feeling much better and stopped taking the pain medicine. I am still sore, but I no longer feel like I need to be laying in bed most of the day. Forrest was off work Monday - Thursday to take care of us. My wonderful parents then took over and watched Rylee and I yesterday and this morning. My friend Jennie has been an angel and came to help a few evenings during the week and spent the afternoon with us today until Forrest got home. We have also had other friends bring us dinner and call to check and see if there was anything they could do to help us out. It is so nice to have wonderful friends and family to take such good care of us.

Forrest is now off again for a couple of days so Rylee and I are well taken care of. I am so lucky to have such a wonderful husband and father.

(My mom is also doing well in case you were wondering. The first few days were not great. It seemed that yesterday was a turning point in her recovery as well. Either that or she was just pretending to feel good for Rylee's sake).