Mission Gallbladder Removal: My adventures of living in a hospital

Man oh man.

Okay. 

On May 1st I woke up in Albuquerque, got on the road back to Lovington after spending the weekend with my ABQ friends. The four hour drive was boring, and got home around 11 a.m. I took a nap, took a shower and started getting ready for work. I was working late that Monday so I didn't have to be at work until 1ish. 

I was dressed and ready to go when my mom walked in the house and I told her I was having really bad heartburn. I told her this as I pressed my hand against the upper part of my tummy. She laughed at me and said, "That's not heartburn if your tummy is hurting." I told her maybe it was indigestion, and I took some Tums. She left and about five minutes later an excruciating pain developed on the upper right side of my tummy, right under my rib cage. 

I have never felt so much pain before in my entire life. Now, I've never given birth but I'm sure contractions and delivering a baby can't hurt as much as my stomach hurt that day. I literally walked around my parents house screaming every curse word ever invented. I'm sure my dogs thought I was a lunatic as they followed me back and forth as I paced throughout each room of the house. I didn't know what to do to make the pain subside. I tried to walk it off, sit it off, lay it off — but nothing helped. I tried to take more Tums but once I put the tablet in my mouth I dashed off into the bathroom and puked. 

I figured after vomiting I'd feel better, but no the pain grew more intense and never faded. So I called my editor and told him that I couldn't come in (I'm sure he thought I was faking it since I had spent the weekend in Albuquerque). I forced myself to sleep and slept for a couple of hours until my mom got home from work. The pain was still there, not as intense as it was earlier that day, but still painful. I told my mom what was going on and she asked if I wanted to go to the clinic. I told her no, because I'm stubborn and very much dislike doctors and clinics. 

So I dealt with the pain for the rest of the evening, until around 9 p.m. when I just couldn't hack it anymore. I told my parents that I needed to go to the ER. We got to the ER at around 9 p.m. and of course sat there and waited for two hours until they saw me — at this point I had puked nonstop, which who knows how I was still puking since there was nothing in me left to puke, I couldn't keep anything down, I had a fever and the stomach pain was consistent. 

When the doctor and nurses finally took me in they put me on an IV and told me they were going to pump Tylenol in me to bring my fever down, and it would maybe help relieve some of my pain. The doctor came in took some blood, pressed down on my tummy and said, "You probably have gallstones." I said okay and he told me to come back tomorrow, talk to a surgeon to see about having my gallbladder removed. After that he left and the nurse started taking my IV out and I asked if I could have some pain medication? She said, "We gave you Tylenol." And I said, "Well, sure for my fever but I still have a lot pain." 

She left to talk with the doctor and came back with a prescription for nausea medication and gave me a pain killer, basically a high dose of ibuprofen. So I was sent back home pretty much in the same condition I showed up, except feeling much worst after being pricked and poked, and with a nausea medication prescription ... psshhh ... what the hell did I need those for?

That night there was no sleep. The pain kept me up and the only comfort I could find in short periods was sitting on my bed while hugging a pillow and resting my head on top of it. Around 4 a.m. I heard my dad get up to go to work and I' sure I looked like a complete psycho because he walked into my room and found me sitting on my bed facing my headboard with my arms wrapped around my tummy. 

The next morning we called the hospital and asked if we could see the surgeon who could take my gallbladder out. We were told I had to see a physician who would then refer me to a surgeon. So I saw Dr. M. who got on the ball and got shit done for me. 

He came in and started asking me all kinds of questions and when he found out that I was in the ER the night before and released he was livid. He asked how the doctor at the ER determined I had gallstones without performing any scans on me? I said I don't know. He asked if I was given pain meds and I said no. After I told him that he called the nurses and shot me up with the "good stuff" that numbed the pain. He ordered a CT Scan and an ultrasound and more blood work.  

That whole morning I had all those tests done and he sent me home and told me he would call me when he got the results back. I got home and was dying for a nap and once I was falling into that sleep zone my phone started ringing. It was Dr. M. and he said that my white blood counts were too high, my pancreas was inflamed, I had a stomach infection and there were signs of stones present in my gallbladder. He told me to go back to the ER as soon as possible and that I'd be admitted to the hospital for a few days. 

So back to the ER I went, it was about 1:30 p.m., they didn't see me until probably 3 p.m. got an IV put in and more blood taken, the nurse asked if I had a preference on which arm I wanted poked and I told her, "Does it matter? It already looks like I'm shooting up heroine." I had probably been poked by needles ten times in the last 24 hours. 

I waited another two hours for a room to become available, and as I waited a couple of doctors stopped by and read my charts. They were all disappointed that I was released from the ER the night before, and one said with my high white blood cell count I should have been admitted immediately. He said my body could have gone into shock and I could have ended up in a coma or have died. 

I was finally put into a hospital room, had more blood taken out and was given my first round of morphine, which was great because it knocked me out, but the pain was still there. The rest of that night was pretty much sleepless with nurses coming in and out almost every hour. I was still running a fever so they were trying to bring that down and at 5 a.m. they came in and took more blood. 

The doctor came in and said the game plan was to get all the inflammation to go down in my tummy — everything on the right side was swollen. So that meant no food or water until things settled in there. He also told me they needed to get my white blood count and enzyme levels to go down. My potassium level was also way too low so I needed to have potassium pumped into my system. 

Oh potassium, what a bitch!

Excuse my french, but there is no other word I can use to describe that liquid torture. The doctor informed my nurse that I needed potassium so she started prepping to put it in my IV. She told me, "This will probably burn a little." And I said okay. I can be a wimp, but I'm not that huge of a wimp and can handle a pretty fair amount of physical pain. But this potassium-crap was unbearable.

Once the liquid from that little bag trickled its way down the tubes into my vein, my arm was on fire. I just wanted to chop it off. It hurt so bad that the pain from the gallbladder was trumped. I literally curled up into a little ball on that hospital bed and cried my eyes out.

The nurse came in and asked if I was alright, and well by just taking a look at the state I was in she knew the answer. She asked if I wanted her to lower the drip and I said yes. She lowered it and later lowered it again to the point where it was barely dripping at all. It took five hours to get through that little bag of potassium — five hours of torturous pain.

Now, I know I sound very dramatic, but during this time I was crying through the pain, my blood pressure was skyrocketing to the point that the nurses were becoming concerned and started monitoring it, I had a fever, I was dehydrated — my lips started to chap and turn purple. And my skin was pale as death.

Because I couldn't stop crying, I guess my nurse thought I was having a mental breakdown and called in a counselor to talk with me. The counselor came in and he asked if I was okay and I told him the truth, that I was crying and freaking out because the potassium hurt like a Mutha Eff. But I told him, "I do have a lot I can talk to you about if you want," so he sat and listened to all the crazy stuff in my head and the nutty stuff going on in my life. He was very kind and asked if he could tell my doctor to refer me to him after I got out of the hospital, evidently my mental health needs a lot of work, which I already knew that. 

After exiting the doors of potassium hell, I asked the nurse if I could get something stronger for the pain from my gallbladder and she hooked me up with something a bit stronger than morphine. The rest of that evening went fine, had some fun visitors (my little cousins) who made my hospital stay entertaining with card games and their jokes. I told them about my potassium fiasco and one of my cousins asked, "Why didn't they just feed you bananas?"

I couldn't agree more. 

The next morning, Thursday, the doctor came in and told me he had good news, my counts and levels were all coming down, but my damn potassium level was still too low. When he told me that I started to cry, I literally prayed the night before that my potassium levels would go up because I never wanted to go through potassium torture again.

That day I had a different nurse and I waited as long as I could to let her start me on another round of five hours of potassium poison pumped into my system. She kind of looked at me funny and said there was no reason I should have been in that much pain the day before from the potassium.

So when she was setting me up she talked me through what she was doing. She said, "Here is your potassium line and here is your fluid line, I'm going to connect them in the middle and the fluid will dilute the potassium by the time it hits your vein. I'm going to start the drip at a high speed."

I gave her an "I hate you" look but said Okay. She said that it would be uncomfortable but I shouldn't be sitting in my bed crying in pain. So we started the potassium and a miracle occurred!

The potassium was flowing into my system pain-free, I mean there was some discomfort but nothing like the day before. I was confused. What the hell happened the day before. We got through the little bag of potassium in one hour! One glorious hour! Not five, but one!

As I laid there and watched the numbers go down of the milliliters of potassium being put into my body, I realized that the fluids being pumped into my system were being tracked too. The day before, only one side of my IV machine was on and counting the amount of drip going into my vein. So I figured out that the nurse did not dilute the potassium and gave it to me straight. That's why I was dehydrating and my blood pressure was sky-high and why I was in so much damn pain. 

On Thursday they also finally let me eat. Not only eat, but they stuffed me with so much food. I hadn't eaten since Sunday so that was already four days food and water free. All I really wanted was a glass of water — I would of killed for water at that point.

At first they gave me broth, iced tea, apple juice and jello. Then an hour and a half later they gave me a heartier broth, apple sauce and more iced tea. I couldn't eat all of it, given that was a lot of food and I started feeling nauseous. Then two hours later they gave me a grilled chicken breast, a chunk of tomato, mashed potatoes and sherbet. 

The point of feeding me was to allow my digestive system to start working again. The inflammation finally had gone down and the doctors wanted to see what I could hold down. Luckily, I held down everything they gave me but I still didn't get my glass of water.

As the evening went on, the night nurses came in for their shifts and I asked one of them if I could have some water. She said no because my charts still said I was not allowed any food or water. I told her "That's funny since they've been shoving foods and drinks down my throat all day." The day nurse was still there so I asked if there was a reason I couldn't have water, she said I could have whatever I wanted. So I told her the night nurses said no and she said she'd get everything cleared up for me. 

So an hour went by and the night nurse came back and I asked again for a glass of water, she looked annoyed and said, "I already told you no." At that point I just let it go, but picked up my phone and called my mom to sneak me in a bottle of water. By the time my mom got back to the hospital the nurses had gotten their crap together and one came in with a beautiful big cup full of iced water — heaven!

I still had some pain that night so I asked for some more pain meds. The meds worked wonders and kicked in fast. I think that night my pain wasn't as bad as the nights before so the drugs kicked in faster and didn't have a lot of pain to kill so the drugs started acting like a true narcotic. I started hallucinating about a raccoon, because one of my mom's friend's daughter, who visited me, gave me a stuffed raccoon bear. She placed it near me on my pillow and told me if I got scared he'd keep me safe. Well that raccoon chased me all night long. I was tripping out so bad that my breathing was irregular and the nurses had to start pumping oxygen in me. It was nuts! 

On Friday, I was finally discharged and I couldn't get out of there fast enough. The thing was, nothing had actually been done with my gallbladder. There were still stones in there and I was afraid I was going to have another attack. The catch though, was the doctors could not do any procedures on me while I was a patient in the hospital. I had to get out and then go back for outpatient procedures. 

The weekend went by and I watched what I ate and had no tequila, margs or Dos X on Cinco de Mayo.

On Monday, I was back at the hospital for a HIDA Scan procedure, which involved laying under a scanning machine for three hours. I was allowed to take a DVD to watch and pass the time so I took Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, but with my luck the DVD player wouldn't read it. So the doctor said there were a couple of DVDs that past patients left and one of them was The Wedding Singer — one of my favs. She popped that in and started the scanning. But every ten minutes the DVD would stop and then skip ten minutes of the movie so I watched The Wedding Singer under 30 minutes and watched it three times while my insides were being scanned. It sucked! 

The next day, I went back to the hospital for an endoscopy procedure — the doctors said there was a possibility of me having a hidden stone that caused my pancreas to inflame. They were going to go in and try to remove it. I was put under anesthesia, which was a first for me and I said a prayer and made good with God just in case I didn't wake up, the doctors did their thing and when I came to the doctor said she couldn't get into one of my gallbladder tubes and the procedure was pretty much pointless. Great! There went $200 for nothing and that's not even the entire cost for the procedure.

Now, almost 10 days later I'm still waiting to see the surgeon to remove my gallbladder — the true cause of the problem. I go back to the doctor tomorrow and hopefully we can get this problem fixed and I can go back to my normal, crazy life. 

Hospitals, doctors and me are obviously not a good mix, but it does make for some interesting stories.