What a Weekend.......

I am now updating my blog within a week of the last one, pretty good eh. I have had at least 3 people bug me about my blog and why it is not updated so I have at least 3 readers. I guess all famous writers had to start somewhere.
The other reason I am able to update this is I am lying here in a hospital bed after having emergency surgery on my gallbladder. It is about 4am and I awoke with a pain in my hip from sleeping on it all night and a slight pain in the stomach is where they did the operation. Now most people reading this blog know my sad story on how I ended up here but I will recap for the one or two that doesn’t. Saturday I had just finishing mowing the lawn at my house and was relaxing having a nice golf Gatorade G2, Red I think...two much details? Ok sorry.....and I started feeling some throbbing pain my back. Being the athlete that I am (no laughing!) I figured the pain was from the 7 mile walk I just did mowing my lawn. After about 30 minutes the pain encircled my whole lower chest are, but it was a weird pain, one I never felt before. I knew something wasn’t right. So I started to use the Google and see if I could find out what this pain might be. I really couldn’t get a definitive answer on this weird pain, and by this time it was approaching 6pm. I was chatting to Mother #2 (CATHY) and she suggested going to the medicenter, so I had a shower and put on clean underwear as mother #1 always suggested in case you get in an accident and have to go to the hospital. Apparently they can decipher between clean underwear and dirty underwear even if it is full of poop from an accident. Anyways, the medicenter #2 sent me to was closed so I texted #2 and asked for options, at the same time plugging the data in my GPS, as I started to drive to the nearest hospital #2 confirmed I was heading in the right direction. On arrival at the North East Emergency clinic, I see the triage nurse and gave her my story of pain and whoa, and she said....because of my age they would like to do an ECG first to rule out heart problems. Well I was not sure to be happy to be going in right away or insulted. None the less, this did concern me as I thought I had ruled out my heart with my 60 minute Google medical training. I must say at this point I was a little nervous that it may be my heart. As luck would have it, the ECG came back negative. I was then thrown back out into the pit affectionately known as the waiting room where moaning man and crying babies were the norm. What I noticed while sitting in the pit was most people there didn’t look sick or hurt. The odd baby crying and the odd limp, but no show stoppers it seems.
Just as my pain started to ramp up they called me in to the back part where all the experts and action happens. I realized that they had a door there to the back, not to keep the patience out, but to keep the doctors in! I am sure they had these electronic dog collars that would zap them if they tried to escape the insanity of an emergency ward. Seriously though, they were moving from patient to patient computer to station, stealth like, not taking a break. It was amazing to see these people work, being able to diagnose a colic baby, to a stroke victim to a whiney lawn mowing athlete.
Once the doctor visited with me, we assessed my pain and he felt it most likely was something to do with my gallbladder. They ordered up IV with some muscle relaxing drugs in it. It seemed to help and after a couple of short hours of being there my pain seemed to have subsided. The doctor confirmed that he thought it might be gallstones and booked an ultra sound for me on the Monday back at this North East Emerge clinic. So I thanked the wonderful staff and jumped in my car and feeling a lot better, headed home. By this time it was 12:30am Sunday morning. I had been in the emergency center for just over 4 hours.
After getting home, I realized I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so I threw some leftover KFC in the oven and heated that up. My Friend Danni popped in on his way home to see how I was doing as #2 had informed him of my crisis. We chatted some and he left around 1am as he had a flight to catch Sunday around 7am. After he left I took my chicken and a glass of milk and ate, and satisfied my hunger and thirst.
I watched a bit of TV and after about an hour I noticed a lot of the same pain coming back, but a lot stronger. I went back to the Google to enhance my previous medical experience and looked up gallbladder stones and attacks to see what I could do. Now Attack to me indicates painful incident that has a start and an end. Now for the most part all the sites said the attacks normally last anywhere’s from 30minutes to 6hours. I looked at the clock and it was now 3am, and it had been almost 12 hours at this point but being the optimist, I decided to ride it out for another hour or so and it should go away, and I should be going back to the clinic during drunk season (2am-4am after the bars close). I then went and had another shower and crawled into bed. By this time the pain had almost doubled again. I was trying to explain the pain to a friend and this is probably my best explanation; ever get winded, you know either punched in the solar plex or fall and get the wind knocked out of you, and just as your starting to catch your breath, you have that sharp pain at the bottom of your lungs, well that’s what I felt like someone constantly punching my solar plexus except the pain encircled my body. I tossed and turned and try to get comfortable, and got out of bed and sat in the living room, and then back to bed etc. This went on for about 2 hours until finally I had tears in my eyes from the pain. I made the command decision to head back to the NE Emergency center as it was now 5:30 am and most of the drunks should be gone and none of the new patience should start showing up for a while. I went to the clinic and this time I sat in the waiting room for at least an hour, I cannot explain the pain and how uncomfortable I was. I never thought that “hey great good time to show up at the emergency clinic, no patients”, problem was there were also fewer doctors and nurses.
They then moved me into the back room and allowed me to lie down on the bed where I waited another hour, I was in so much pain at this point again, I had tears in my eyes. Finally a doctor seen me and ordered another IV with the get better juice. I figured the last time it took about 20 minutes and I was feeling fine so this should be about the same. On top of that they gave me a couple percasets, which I had never had before but had heard about through this intervention TV shows where someone was addicted to pain killers. I figured I should have this pain licked. After about 20 minutes of lying there, the nurse showed up and was preparing my IV. Unfortunately I have a hard time with needles, at least my veins do. This poor nurse was at the end of her 12 hour shift at 7am and after three attempts could not get the needle into my arm. Another Nurse then came in and after 2 attempts was successful with a smaller needle in a smaller vein. The poking of the needles did distract me a bit from the excruciating pain in my stomach, perhaps this was a ploy or some new acupuncture ...I know...just kidding....Anyways, with needle in arm, and happy juice flowing , my Percocet’s were given to me and I had swallowed them up, I figured I had a 20 minute rough time left until things got better. After about 45 minutes of no improvements, and actually having the pain increase yet again, one of the nurses that had come on recently had heard my whimpering while lying there, and was able to get the doctor to authorize giving me some morphine. So they gave me a morphine and Gravol mix so I wouldn’t get sick from the morphine alone. Needless to say that it worked and took about 85% of the pain away. The doctor then scheduled a ultra sound for me that morning at the Royal Alexander hospital in DT Edmonton. I contacted Cathy and she said they would pick up my car and take me to te Royal Alex for the appointment.

DAY 2 I will write this in tomorrow .