It's been a week since my last post . . . a very long and eventful week . . . a week filled with reasons to be thankful.
Last Friday I had my gall bladder removed. The surgery went smoothly and I was home, napping in bed by mid-afternoon. When I got up from my nap, I was somewhat surprised at how good I felt. My husband filled my pain prescription, but I felt so good, I didn't anticipate needing to use it.
Saturday morning M told me that the digestive upset that had been bothering her since Wednesday evening had gotten worse. She wanted to go to the convenient care and get checked out by one of the doctors. My husband needed to head downtown to help K move into a new apartment, so I would have to be the one to take M to the doctor.
Fortunately it wasn't very crowded when we arrived and M was able to see the doctor almost right away. Long story short -- the doctor drew blood for testing and sent her home to collect stool samples. The plan was to return first thing Sunday morning to drop off the samples.
Unfortunately, Sunday morning found us in the emergency room at CDH. M had had a miserable night and she begged her father to take her straight to the ER. I hadn't been able to take a shower the day before (1st day post-gall bladder surgery), so we decided that they would go ahead and I would meet them at the ER after I jumped in the shower. Little did I know it would be more than 24 hours before I would return home.
At the ER, M had a basic assessment, an EKG and then a CT scan. The scan showed that she had some degree of inflammation in her colon -- she would need a colonoscopy to determine the precise location and severity of the inflammation.
A colonoscopy. I knew what that meant, but M had been working the overnight shift when I endured my colonoscopy preparation. She had know idea how hard it had been for me to drink the liquid or how many trips to the bathroom it took before I was able to empty my system. At that point I would gladly have relived the whole experience if I could have spared her the same agony.
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