I'm pretty bad at maintaining multiple journals. Prepare for an info dump!
Over the past, ohhh, year-ish, I've had these fleeting stomach pains. They come once every few months, and usually late at night. My stomach starts hurting, and at first, I thought it was 'cause I was hungry. Turns out eating perpetuates the problem into greater intensity, so "hunger" was not the issue. I got one of these attacks last winter while at home, and my dad deduced that it was "the family hiatal hernia". Yay. Thanks for telling me that sooner.
I managed to make it through this past semester without an attack, but then had one that began the evening of Monday, May 27th. It lasted for a couple days, easing up by Wednesday so that I felt pretty solid. I went about my business, thinking it passed, but then got a wickedly awful attack just five days later on June 3rd. Sharp pain in the stomach coupled with nausea, to the point where I just didn't want to move at all. I thought for a bit it was an appendix thing, since I'd never had attacks so close together. Tuesday the sharp pain was gone, and I went to the doctor's, getting prescribed meds for stomach acid and a referral to the gastroenterologist. I spent the rest of the day sleeping, puking, and shaking violently. It was great, as you can tell.
Wednesday was a bit better, although the nausea was still there. Had another outbreak of shakes, so at that point, my mom gets me Pedialyte because I basically had been subsisting off of water, Carnation breakfast drink, and a couple of saltines. Thursday I went to the doctor again, and got a blood test done. I was feeling pretty good at this point, not really hungry but having really bad cravings for food (namely fried chicken; no, you don't understand). Manged to eat my first meal in four days, scrambled eggs and toast. It was amazing.
Imagine my surprise to get a phone call that Friday morning, telling me to "get to the hospital and have an ultrasound done of your gallbladder, stat". Half an hour later, I'm there filling out paperwork, and half an hour from there I'm waiting for my doctor to get the results and call me back. Well, apparently there is sludge in my gallbladder, and all indications say I'll be having surgery to get it taken out.
Cue phone tag.
My doctor was supposed to confer with a surgeon and call back that afternoon. Such didn't happen. I call the doctor's office Saturday, asking for a status report. I am notified that my doctor won't be in until Tuesday morning. That's great. Come Tuesday, my mom is pissed, so she calls the doctor's office when it begins to not be morning anymore. The doctor is busy. Get called back an hour later. It's my doctor. "Yes, you're having surgery, make an appointment at this place". Okay, on it. Call the surgeon's office, which is in the same building as my doctor's - their doors are 20 feet away from each other. Get an appointment for Wednesday.
Go to Wednesday appointment. Fill out more paperwork that is completely arbitrary because they are about my medical records and why can't they just ask my doctor for this. Oh, as it turns out, they HAVE those things from my doctor, so what I just did was completely pointless. My surgeon is super nice and funny but apparently only hires grumpy secretaries and nurses for her practice. Fun times.
"Yes, you are definitely having surgery. Pick a Thursday to have it on."
The next day, I went out with my best friend for the first time in probably a good 10 months. The surgeon's office was supposed to call the house in the morning, they didn't, I call them to notify that everyone will be out of the house so please call my cell phone. Okay. Get a call while driving, which I miss. Get a grumpy nurse when I immediately (like, I missed the call by a note of the ringtone) call back because she's all "I just left you a VERY detailed voicemail" I told you not to do that on my phone dammit arbitrary paperwork.
Surgery is June 20th at 9:30am. As in, two days from now, for you folks still reading this.
Clear liquid diet for Wednesday, so my menu is water, tea, 7-Up, chicken broth, and Jell-O. Coffee was allowed but that means black coffee and ew. Best friend gets relayed this information and goes "So vodka's still good, right?"
In the meantime, I haven't been allowed to work (I currently have a summer job at this dog kennel across the street and it's not exactly a desk job) and of course I won't be allowed to work until I'm healing up. The surgery is slated to be a larper laparoscopic one, so I'll recover a lot faster than if they went in the typical method. Hopefully that'll go as planned!
Oh, and I've been drawing a lot to fill the time. I'll post that sketchdump to prove that I have. >_>
