Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy

For all my frequent readers, yep all 3 of you, this is what you don’t want: gallstones. Yes, they are super painful, nothing you do makes the pain go away, very unbearable. It really hurts in the center below your breast bone. When you have a stone blocking the bile it is extremely painful, and you will probably be rolling around in pain, so heed my advice: avoid at all cost.
I speak from experience, and this is by far something you can controllably avoid. I’ve been having problems that my upper abdomen would hurt, not constantly, but would wake me up at 4 AM just rather hurting. Sometimes the pain would move around to my lower back on the right side, but not that often. These are the symptoms I had, no throwing up, fever or other symptoms that other people have. I’ve done lots of research online, trying to find out what my problem was (at 4 AM) and I’ve come to the conclusion, with no doctor’s help, that the problem I had was gallstones.
So after my second trip to the Emergency Room at Kishwaukee, (thanks Krissy rushing me there, I owe you what it costs for an ambulance;) ) I got a doctor that actually thought it was gallstones also. Requesting the tests he should to diagnose gallstones he found that indeed I had “many” gallstones. I felt that I should do something about this. The biggest problem being that I was in the middle of losing my parents health insurance and getting my own insurance from my job, which the insurance isn’t going to start till March 1st. So I’m going to have to use what’s known as COBRA, basically an extension of my previous insurance till I get new insurance.
Either way, Wednesday night I was admitted to the ER around 8 PM, and by midnight I was being prepared for staying there for the night. My surgery to remove my gall bladder would be either first thing in the morning, or later in the afternoon. After a restless night of pain the doctor came in around 6:30 AM and said that my surgery wouldn’t be until 3 or 4. So I attempted to sleep all day Thursday, drugged up on morphine (which didn’t do anything for me) and other pain meds.
Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy Surgery (the non-cut-you-wide-open surgery to take out your gallbladder) went well, about an hour total from what I hear (I couldn’t tell, I was knocked out). During recovery I did a lot of sleeping, as usual. They kept me over night, and Friday morning the doctor came back to check on me, and said I could leave at any point, he was happy with my recovery. At 7 AM, after another night of not sleeping well (the nurses had to come take my vitals every 2 hours) I sure didn’t want to get up and have to leave.
My parents came around noon, and that’s when we prepared to leave. Everything is rather sore, but not near as bad as before surgery. Friday included a lot more resting, sleeping in a normal bed was painful too. You’d be surprised how much you use your stomach muscles, even lying down.
As of today, I’m doing pretty well. Still definitely sore, but I can move around pretty well now, short of breath sometimes, everything isn’t quite back to normal. I’ve been working on the recent video for CCT, so I’ve had lots to do as far as that, but I’m doing pretty well now. That’s all folks, hope it was informative.