Wishful Thinking

This blog post is a follow up to the last post about the sickness that has invaded our home for the last month.  It ended with my frustration of the month of sickness ending with Audrey getting Impetigo.  If only it had ended there as I had hoped!  I had no idea what lay over the horizon.  So, let me continue the story for you...

Saturday was the day I took Audrey to the Urgent care and learned that the sores my daughter was getting all over her body were in fact a staph infection called impetigo.  I spent the next 24 hours having to keep the kids totally isolated from each other and washing hands and everything she came in contact with.  The next day, when she hit the 24 hours mark of being on the antibiotic, she was supposedly non-contagious, so I went on a cleaning craze.  I disinfected everything in the house that Audrey could have come in contact with, as well as washed every blanket, sheet, or article of clothing that touched her.

Monday seemingly dawned as any other Monday.  I was having a little bit of chest pain, and just figured it was indigestion.  As the morning wore on, it was getting a bit worse.  I had a horrible thought that it reminded me of the Pericarditis I had almost 5 years ago, but I refused to believe it.  I took some tums and the pain seemed to get better.  I took a shower and then told Nathan, that I thought I was having the same kind of chest pain I'd had long ago, but the tums made it better, so it must have just been gas, and went on my way.  About an hour later the pain began to return.  It got to the point where I couldn't hide it from Nathan any more and he grew concerned.  He wanted to take me to the ER, but being the stubborn person I am I refused.  I finally agreed to call my doctor.  He wanted to see me right away, so they fit me in during their lunch hour.  They did an EKG and blood draws, but nothing showed up, so he said he thought it was the antibiotic I was on for the mastitis causing me GI upset, so I should stop taking it.  I went home relieved. If only that was the end of the story.  I realize that this story is going to be a novel if I tell every detail, so let me speed it up a bit...

Basically, the pain returned, so badly that evening I couldn't breathe and was writhing in pain.  I scared Nathan half to death, and we finally called my parents to come over so he could take me to the ER.  I will say, when you go into the ER with chest pain, you don't sit for hours in the waiting room.  They started running tests on me almost right away before they even had a room for me.  My heart looked fine, my blood work came back normal, the US of my gall bladder showed no stones, and they saw no blood clots in my lungs or blood vessels in the CT scan. After almost 8 hours the ER doctor felt he had ruled out anything life-threatening and sent me home with pain medicine and antacids.  He said it could be GI or ulcers, or it could be something with the gall bladder he just wasn't seeing or it could be pleurisy.  The reason he had a hard time diagnosing it, was the pain was massively in my back and my whole chest and referred to my right side.

The next day my doctor called to check up on me, and I told them that I had gone to the ER and what they had found or rather not found.  When he heard me say that like clock work it ALWAYS came on 20-30 minutes after I ate anything, he said he really still thought it was my gall bladder, so he wanted to send me for another CT scan this time of my abdomen.  I went the next morning for that.  I also forgot to mention that the night before, my mom called her friend who was a general surgeon and explained everything I was going through.  He told her to have me call his office the next morning and make them put me on the schedule for a consult.  I made an appointment to see him after my CT scan the next morning.  After he listened to everything I had been experiencing and pushed around on my stomach, he said he was 98% sure it was my gall bladder, but he wanted to run one more test to be sure before rushing into surgery. The other thing he said, is he really believes that when I had the pericarditis 5 years earlier, that I was misdiagnosed and probably had a gall bladder attack at that time as well.  I have also had pain in my upper right back for the last 7 years, which has never gotten better through every pill possible, doctors, chiropractors, and physical therapy. He thinks it's been gall bladder this whole time.

The next morning, I went in for the HIDA scan with CCK.  Basically, they fill you with radioactive material and watch through a camera for over an hour as it makes it's way through your liver into your gall bladder and then into your intestine.  Once the gall bladder is full, then they inject me with the CCK (a synthetic chemical which tells the gall bladder to squeeze, much like your body tells your gall bladder to squeeze bile to digest your food, especially if you just ate a nice big greasy hamburger.).  A normal gall bladder should empty at least 70% of it's contents, and the tech told me if they see anything less than 30% emptying, they will remove the gall bladder.  Turns out my gall bladder barely emptied 20% of it's contents.  So the surgeon's office called that afternoon and said my gall bladder was diseased and not working so they had me scheduled for surgery the next day.

Friday May 4th, I went in for a laprascopic cholecystectomy.  That was yesterday, and now I am at home recovering from the surgery. I have pain from the surgery but no chest pain, which is AWESOME!  I basically didn't eat anything for 5 days because even when I had the smallest anything like a carrot or piece of watermelon it would send me into one of the attacks where I thought I was dying each time.  I basically warred between hunger pains and chest pain.  When the hunger pain won out I ate something like jello or a piece of fruit or vegetable, and took a pain pill to help me deal with the attack.  I'll take surgical pain any day over that chest pain. 

Here's me pre-surgery:

And I can't believe I'm actually going to post this...with no make up and hair not brushed, but here I am today, minus one gall bladder, which the surgeon said was extremely inflamed. (Thankful it's gone now.)

Sorry for what did turn out to be a pretty long blog post, but I wanted to catalog my experience, especially because I don't ever expect to go through that again.  If I could actually be pain free once I recover for the first time in 7 years words can't even express the joy I will feel!  Thank you to all who prayed for me and our family this last week and during the surgery.  Your prayers were felt and I was so blessed my your encouragement and support.