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So, here's what happened

Posted by Trish (aka trisha) Jul 28 '13, 02:30
For the last 3-4 weeks, about every 5 days I'd get nauseated then pop a temp of 101-102F. I didn't think a lot of it because I'd pop a couple of aspirin, go to sleep for a while and it would go away. Crash's high school reunion was this weekend, so we did a few things. Saturday night they had a dinner/dance at the Elks Lodge. We didn't go to the dinner because I was feeling kind of punky so we just went late to the dance. When we got there, I was feeling more than bad. We ran into several friends in the parking lot, talked to them a bit made plans to meet them for breakfast at a local restaurant with a breakfast buffet and left.

Next morning I felt pretty good. We went to the restaurant about 9am, laughed and talked, stayed until about 10:30. I had started feeling this sharp pain under my ribs on the right side and gotten really queasy so I was glad to be getting home. I went back and laid on the bed. The pain and nauseaa kept getting worse, then I started having chills. I feel asleep for a little while. When I woke up, it hurt even worse and I was just burning up. Crash took my temp and it was 104.2F. Toddlers do that all the time, but when an adult runs a temp like that, It's bad. So I went to the bathroom (I hadn't gone pee since about 10pm the night before (warning gross tmi ahead) so I went and it was actually dark brown with bloody streaks. I mean, like darker than iced tea brown. Compared to wood, I'd say it was close to Walnut brown. I totally freaked out. I went to the computer, pulled up Web MD.com, plugged in right upper quadrant pain, high temperature, nausea, and brown pee. The first thing that came up was acute liver cancer. I freaked. Took some more aspirin and went back to bed. It was now about 5pm. It got so bad I was just crying with the pain and I finally let Mark take me to the local ER around 2am.

The nurse checked me in, took my vitals and my temp was just a shade below 105F. She got the doctor right away and I could hardly stand to let him touch me. The took a bunch of blood, had me drink a couple of glasses of water to make me pee (which I finally did after about 2 hours--just a couple of ounces but enough for them) and sent me for an ultrasound of the kidney/liver/gallbladder and pancreas. I told the ultrasound chick that I knew she wasn't allowed to tell me what she saw, but if it was straight on obvious she better tell me. After 7-8 minutes she said, "I see gallstones!" I actually sat up on the bed, started clapping my hands and laughing. I think she thought I was insance until I told her about webMD and the lever cancer. She told me I was the first patient EVER to be happy about gallstones.

I went back to the ER, there was a lot of whispering going on between the ER doctor and my personal doctor (who had gotten there while I was in xray). The came and told me that my white count was over 30 thousand, I was almost septic, my gallbladder was close to rupturing, there was at least one stone blocking the common duct down to the pancreas, and I had a shit ton of gallstones. Then they said they were sending me by ambulance to St. Lukes in Boise as a direct admit to surgery, to have surgery that afternoon. So off I went..

The ambulance ride was horrible, I felt every little bump, etc. I got to the hospital and met my 2 surgeons--it turned out I had to have two separate surgeries in 2 separate rooms, back to back. There were so many stone and the GB was so infected they had to go down my throat, through my stomach, into my small intestine and somehow loop around up through the pancreas first and get as many stones out as possible. After that, they moved me to another room, poed 4 holes in my belly and got the gallbladder plus 3 stones blocking the common duct. My main surgeon said it was full of pus and green goo. She was afraid she couldn't get it out endoscopically and it would have to be an open procedure, but she finessed it out without it rupturing on her. Then she really freaked me out. She told me that when I came into the ER I was 12-18 hours away from a coma, then another 12-24 hours from dying. FROM a GALLBLADDER!

So then I spent the rest of that day in a pain filled, nauseated fog. Tuesday and Wednesday were about the same. Oh, I almost forgot "the drain". My surgeon had inserted this big ass drain into the hole where my GB was. It kept filling up with this red, bloody gunk. The doctor pulled it out on Wednesday, it was the strangest feeling, I could feel this tube snaking around my insides as she pulled it out. Later that night I had a couple of huge gushes out the incision. I didn't really feel it, but I'd look down and my gown, bed, and undies would be soaked with blood.

I finally got to go home on Thursday. I think that's when I figured out how bad it was. Normally they take out Gallbladders in the morning and send you home that evening, I had to stay most of a week. The ride home was pretty painful but I made it. The real bitch was getting up the front stairs. I was crying after just going up 3 porch steps. So I've been basically eating pain and nausea pills and sleeping. I just can't believe it snuck up on me like that. Heck, I had my semi-yearly blood work about 6 weeks ago and all it showed was worsening kidney disease. So, that's the whole story. Now I think I'm finally sleepy so I'm going to bed. night :)

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