For a couple of days there, I didn't think I would be.  The "simple" gall bladder removal turned into a major surgery with three surgeons and blood transfusions and not only my extremely swollen gall bladder removed (according to one surgeon, it was the size of two grapefruits side by side instead of being smaller than an egg), but part of my liver as well: the gall bladder had attached itself to the liver with connective tissue.  In addition to the "sludge" that my gall bladder was sending through the liver, it was also sending stones, which had abused my poor liver into looking like red swiss cheese, so the surgeons took a biopsy to make sure nothing else was going on.

Though I am home now, I can barely move for the pain in my side.  I make it around part of the house, but mostly stay sitting or laying down.  Really freaks a person out to nearly die on the operating table.

got the "sludge" cleaned out of my liver on Tuesday.  Today I get to rest, then tomorrow I get my gall bladder out. 

When the ER doctor first told me I had "sludge", I thought my ears were playing tricks on me.  But that is in fact what he was telling me, that I had sludge in my gall bladder.  Biliary sludge can also cause acute pancreatitis, which is what suddenly hit me last month and made me horrendously sick and sent me to the ER. 

This time I was smart about which ER to go to though.  Clear Lake Regional Hospital is a nice hospital and all, but I hate their ER.  The last time I went, the attending ER doctor sent me home with a prescription for a medicine that causes an increased risk of heart disease or stroke in the patients that use it.  And those are normal patients.  I hate to think about what it would have done to someone like me. Top that off, though I told him I was having angina, he never noted it on my chart.  (The ER claimed I never told them I was a cardiac patient.  How strange then, that on my discharge they tell me to follow up with my cardiologist, Dr. Grover!)  

So this time I told Ronald to take me to Christus St. John Hospital in Nassau Bay.  Instead of waiting six and a half hours in the outer reaches of hell like I did the last time I went to Clear Lake Regional, I was in the waiting room about 15 minutes.

Instead of waiting for two hours to even talk to a doctor once I went back, a doctor, Dr. Robert Kaale (article goes to 2002 graduating award recipients for UTMB Galveston--he won the Emergency Services Student Award), came and talked to me almost immediately to ask me what was wrong with me.  He actually listened to me (instead of being so busy that he just made a diagnosis based on what other people had asked me).  It was pretty nice.

The hospital even gave me a private room and a red carnation.  It is so nice to have peace and quiet while I am sick as a dog....

UPDATE: DDAANNGGG!! Those painkillers are gggreeaattt!!  No wonder I made so many typos when I first wrote that entry!  I tried to fix them all, but since I am still on the painkillers, I am sure I missed some...    

Belle's little guy is a real cutie, is about a foot and a half tall, and weighs about 20-25 pounds.  Even so, he thinks he is the toughest buckeroo banzai bronco on the pasture.