The week of Thanksgiving was a study in highs and lows for me this year. Thanksgiving was late, on Nov. 28th. We were supposed to be hosting both families at our house for the first time. So the preceding days were supposed to be filled with cooking and cleaning.
The Tuesday night before Thanksgiving I had a bad gallbladder attack. I had been having occasional issues since Labor day. Usually after 2 hours, the intense pain, nausea, possible vomiting and etc would be over. Tuesday night I passed the 3 and 4 hour mark with no relief from the pain or nausea. So I held out until a reasonable time Wednesday morning to wake up Jeff. We headed in to his ER. Luckily Claire was with grandparents so we just had Ellie with us. Ultrasound showed gallstones but no emergency issues. So some serious pain and anti-nausea meds fixed me up. And made me very sleepy. All I wanted to do was sleep. When we got home I barely made it up the stairs to crawl into bed. Around noon on Wednesday Jeff woke me up long enough to ask what we wanted to do about Thanksgiving. I was feeling okay except for being tired so I decided to go ahead with plans for the big meal at our house. I figured once the tiredness wore off I'd be fine.
Except I was tired all day and didn't feel very good. I was trying to cook mashed potatoes while feeling bad. My mom told me to just rest and she would take care of everything once she got there in the morning.
But I woke up the next morning feeling good. Great in fact! Back to normal. So I cooked and cleaned all morning. That afternoon I ate delicious food and spent time with our awesome families.
That evening I did some Black Friday shopping with my mom and sister. I felt a little rough the next morning, but well enough to head out for a little shopping and lunch. My mom took the girls home with her. That afternoon I started feeling bad again and the pain came back off and on. I was pretty out of commission and looking forward to an appointment with a surgeon Monday morning. My parents kept the girls Friday afternoon through Sunday.
Sunday morning I was feeling passable and met my mom and aunt Val for lunch to pick up the girls. Things went downhill over the rest of the day. The pain was constant all afternoon. At bedtime I loaded up on my meds and was happy to be able to fall asleep. But I woke up 2 hours later feeling pain.
I called Jeff at work to see if I could take any more pain medicine since I had maxed out the prescribed dosage. He said I could take one more but that would be it for a while. He then asked some more questions about what was going on and was concerned about that the pain had been continuous since that afternoon. We decided that I should probably head to the ER at some point. But since I had taken that extra pain pill I wasn't really fit to drive. So I had to start calling family for help. My parents answered the midnight call and rode up. My mom stayed at my house with the girls while my dad drove me to the ER to see Jeff.
I didn't feel as bad as the first time I went to the ER. I felt better even than when I first called Jeff. He gave me the option of going home and waiting til my appointment in the morning or staying and wait awhile to get an ultrasound. I didn't really feel well enough to go back home so I stayed. The ultrasound showed that a stone had gotten stuck in a duct. So that warranted admission to the hospital and getting slated for surgery that afternoon with Jeff's preferred surgeon.
The surgeon got delayed so I spent some awful time laying on a bed in a LOUD hallway. And my pain wasn't terribly well controlled in recovery so there were lots of tears. But I felt much better once my gallbladder was out. And the recovery was a pretty quick one. After a week I was feeling pretty much back to normal.
.JPG)
