What's She Up to Now? Jody's Life Blog

And so I was Almost Dead Without Even Knowing it...

I was pretty secretive about my surgery I had in January because I thought it was an interesting story and I wanted to be able to share it, myself. But I'm terrible at blogging, so I never got around to it until now. And only now because Elfycia Lee ☮ asked about it and so I turned that email into this blog post. This is the story of why I disappeared briefly in January.

In January of this year (2022), just before classes started, I started getting sick on a Saturday evening. I felt fine all day, but then started getting nauseated and having chest pains. It was getting worse, though coming and going, so I called Ask-a-Nurse (because the VA hospital gets mad if we go to the ER unnecessarily). She told me to go to the ER, which was good because I thought so, too. lol They were signs of a heart attack in women (which aren't exactly the same as signs of a heart attack in men, though there is crossover) and I was worried, not just that I might be having a heart attack, but worried about what's wrong because my family has strokes, not heart attacks. What could possibly be causing this?

I had a friend take me because I didn't think I could drive myself and didn't want to risk throwing up in an Uber and getting a 1-star rating. Unfortunately, she had COVID at the time, but it was like 11:30 at night on a Saturday night and no one else was answering.

I got to the ER and it wasn't crowded (because, as I said, the VA gets irritated if you go for no reason, like simple cold symptoms, etc.) so they got me back pretty soon. Also, I was mostly dry heaving in the waiting room and no one likes to see or hear that.

Anyway, so they put a heart monitor on me and did other tests. I was writhing in pain. It took 3 doses of morphine to get it under control to where I could tolerate it. They did an ultrasound and I had 2 stones in my gallbladder. The problem was that apparently, there are 2 tubes, one going into the gallbladder and one going out, and the one going out has a sucking motion? Apparently, one of the stones got stuck at the entrance of the exit (got that?) and was trying to get sucked into the exit tube, but it was too big. He said either my writhing in pain or my violent vomiting knocked it loose and then I felt well enough to even go to work at that point. Very strange how quickly I felt well again.

While I was in the ER and in the waiting room, I saw several residents because it's a teaching hospital. People kept mentioning my abdominal ultrasound. I kept telling them I didn't get a whole abdominal one, only one for my gallbladder. Naturally, the patient doesn't know what she's talking about. One doctor even said she knew it was mine because I was the only gallbladder patient in the whole hospital. She then went back to look at it again, you know, to prove that she was right. Then she came back sheepishly telling me that I was right. I hadn't had one. Well, I respected her for checking AND for telling me I was wrong. None of the rest said they were going to check and if they did check, no one else admitted they were wrong. Of course, all these people mentioning my abdominal ultrasound worried me that apparently everyone (but me) got one, so I tried to get one. Nope. I don't need one. But how do you know I don't? You haven't done it yet. And if it's what everyone with gallbladder problems has, maybe we should do one. Nope? Fine.

I was in the ER for a very long time, maybe 8 hours after they were done with me, because there were no empty hospital beds. They finally had to discharge someone early to get a bed for me. It all evens out. They admitted that they were discharging me a day early after the surgery because they needed the bed for someone else. What goes around, comes around, I guess.

Anyway, the doctor said the gall stone could get sucked up again at any time, so I would need my gallbladder out at some point in the next few months. He said my gallbladder didn't show the signs of it being an emergency, so we could wait. However, I was just starting the semester, like that week (because it's now Sunday, of course, since I got there around midnight on Saturday night / Sunday morning). I told him I couldn't risk having to have emergency gallbladder surgery right before a big paper was due, so if it needed to come out soon, it needed to come out now.

He agreed to that and even bumped a person off his surgical schedule to accommodate me. Personally, I wanted it Tuesday because I was going to get out of work for 1 week and if I had it on Tuesday, that meant I didn't have to go to my internship on Monday the following week. That supervisor was mean to me and I didn't want to go. (The Wednesday and Friday supervisor was nice to me, but the Monday one wasn't.) I was already over the number of hours required the semester before, so I figured I could miss some that semester. He said it needed to be Monday because of staffing issues. This was still when we had a lot of COVID issues. In fact, I overheard my ER nurse saying they called him back to work while he was still testing positive because they were so short staffed.

Anyway, my white blood cell count was REALLY high. I lost track, but it took somewhere between 6 and 8 bags of antibiotics to get it back down for the surgery. That's one of the signs that you need your gallbladder out ASAP. But another sign is that you have a high fever. I kept telling them I don't get high fevers. Mine was 99.8 (37.7C). A low fever means I'm really sick. Of course, no one believes the patient. Another sign that you need your gallbladder out immediately is that the walls of it are thickening. Mine weren't so he only was really taking it out now to accommodate my school schedule...thankfully. I asked if they would mind taking a look around while they were in there, you know, since I didn't get an abdominal ultrasound. They said they wouldn't because it could cause adhesions and more problems. Oh, uh, yeah. Never mind. Let's not do that.

In recovery the only thing I remembered hearing was the word "gangrene." WHAT?!?

After I was awake enough to know what was going on, the doctor said everything went well and I'd be fine. So, I asked him about the word I heard in recovery. Maybe he was referring to another patient. Nope! He said my gallbladder was already mostly dead and 50% covered in gangrene. I was literally rotting on the inside and had on idea. He said I probably wouldn't have survived if I'd had the surgery on Tuesday. So THAT was why the walls of my gallbladder weren't thickening. They were already pretty much dead. Rotting things get thinner, not thicker. He said they did take a look around while they were in there and everything else looked fine. An abdominal ultrasound might have done the same thing without the risk of adhesions...just saying... Though in their defense, my gallbladder looked fine, minus the stones, in that ultrasound, so I can't be too mad.

Side note: How do you get 2 stones like the size of a pea that never happen to cross that sucking tube while they were smaller?!? I assume it took them a while to grow to that size, right? I have no idea, but maybe I've had like 20 of them and the other 18 passed through without me ever noticing.

Yeah, so I was literally a day away from likely being dead and had no idea...and also felt pretty much fine. So strange! That would have been pretty terrible if I'd suddenly disappeared from WdC and no one knew what happened.

And this is why we all need both a WdC Will (AKA a WdC Succession Plan) and a White Case Letter to our Family asking them to send SM a copy of our death certificate so we can become a white case and always be remembered here. Yeah, uh I've sort of done those things, but not as fully as I REALLY need to.

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