For about the next five years, life managed to swim along with no major hiccups. My daughter went off to college, graduated and got her EMT license; and my son was home working drywall or coaching baseball, eventually going back to college himself. I was working my dream job selling used books, and I was going every four weeks to get my shots and seeing my oncologist quarterly.
One of the side effects of my shots is that they can cause gall stones. I am here to tell you that I have never felt worse than when my gall bladder went bad. I went to work as normal, called my boss to tell her that I was sick and needed her as quickly as possible. When I got home, I called the doctor who was done for the day, so I got in to see her Nurse Practitioner. Tests and pain relievers later, I am sent to the hospital where the hospitalist (an MD) comes in to tell me I have a blockage and they will have to do a gastric bypass. I'm set up on a pain drip that has little effect and I have a plethora of friends who are there to show their care. The morning after my admittance, the surgeon comes in and tells me he's read my chart and he thinks it's not a blockage and he wants to do one more test, a HIDA scan, which measures the bile in the gall bladder. Guess what? The results come back that I have a bad gall bladder and he's going to remove it that afternoon.
Years ago Rich Little did a sketch on celebrities in unlikely professions. One of his impressions was John Wayne as a Brain Surgeon, "We're gonna have to yank that little bugger out!" My only disappointment was that my surgeon didn't tell me in his best John Wayne that he was going to have to yank that little bugger out.
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