Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Tales of Gall Bladders Gone

About 13 or 14 years ago, my friend Courtney called me up on a Saturday morning and said she didn't feel well, could I drive her to Urgent Care in Somerville?  I said of course I would and off we went.  While at Urgent Care she was sick to her stomach and it was green.  The doctor she saw suspected it might be her gall bladder, so off we went to Mount Auburn Hospital to the Emergency Department in Cambridge.  Sure enough she had a "sickly" gall bladder and would have to have emergency surgery the next morning to remove it.  We called her family but they wouldn't be able to get there until after the surgery so I said I would be back first thing in the morning and would be there until her family arrived.  I did just that.

Then in 2005 I began to have abdominal pain, nothing like anything I had experienced before.  I went to the ER, also Mount Auburn, and they told me I had Gall Stones.  The attack passed and I was set up with a surgeon by my doctor to have my gall bladder removed.  The Saturday before the scheduled Surgery, I woke up at about 4:30 am and called my mother to take me to the ER as I was in too much pain to drive myself.  I got there and the pain was so bad I was screaming.  They shot me up with more pain medicine while my mom looked on helplessly.  Then my dad showed up at about 8 am as my mom had called him.  I apologized for waking him up so early on a Saturday.  He said he had already been up.  Then he told me that my step-mother's mother had passed away that morning.  I cried in my drugged out state, as she was a very nice, kind lady.  The next morning I had emergency surgery.  Courtney came to visit and ended up driving me home.  We had to go to two different CVS's because the first 24 hour CVS was out of Percocet.  I got home at about 1 am.

Two years ago my husband had horrible abdominal pain.  I took him to Newton Wellesley Hospital.  They did a CT Scan and sure enough, found Gall stones.  The attack wasn't severe enough for them to do emergency surgery so we followed up with his PCP.  He wanted my husband to go see a surgeon but with my husband working, and the expensive copays and parking at the hospital, we never really got around to it.  The last several months he has been having mild to moderate abdominal pain with some nausea, so we went to our new PCP and she ordered an ultrasound.  Sure enough he still had gall stones.  So today we saw a surgeon and in 3 weeks he is getting his gall bladder removed.

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