A Patient Experience in Patience, Part 1

2017 marked an April Fool's Day that I will never forget. I've never been big on practical joking and on a day that it's celebrated, I felt like the biggest joke was played on me.
March 31st was a great day. I spent the day with 2 of my Grand-nieces. We shopped, cooked and even painted pottery. At the end of the day, I was my usual nocturnal self, still wide awake at 2 am (now April 1st). Suddenly, my stomach began to hurt. "No. Wait. That's not where my stomach is.", I thought. The pain was radiating from the right side, kind of where my ribs are. Even through the pain, I began searching the internet and everything kept pointing toward the gallbladder organ. Gallbladder? I didn't even know what to think but the pain kept increasing, so I woke my husband up and off to ER we went.

The ER was empty (thank God) and as I was being assessed, everyone kept asking me the same question, "Do you still have your gallbladder?". Yes, I still had it. As a matter of fact, I never even thought about it...until now. I'm taken to get an ultrasound only to be forgotten in the hallway by patient transport. The ultrasound technician felt so bad for me that she closed her office door and wheeled me back to emergency herself. With the appropriate pain meds on board (Finally!) and after seeing a parade of physicians, the chief surgeon announced, "We're going to admit you." The first thing out of my mouth was, "Why??" Two gallstones showed up on the ultrasound and the CT-Scan and my heightened pain meant that something else was going on other than just the gallstones.

April 1st at approximately 7:30 am, I'm officially admitted and moved into a private hospital room. My mind is still in disbelief because I've never been through anything like this before. No sooner than I'm in my room and I'm told that I've been scheduled for an MRI. Sheesh! I really don't want to move anymore. The pain is causing me breathing problems and I just want to be left alone. The MRI was the most difficult MRI I've ever had because it required me to hold my breath at a time where it hurt to just breathe. I felt like I was fading in and out of conscience-ness during the test, so I can't recall how often I was doing as instructed. FINALLY! The test was over and I'm wheeled back in the hall to wait for patient transport...again. My MRI was supposed to have taken 30-35 minutes. I don't know how long the patient's test after me was supposed to take but I was STILL waiting in the hallway on a patient bed after the patient's test was complete.

Back in my room, dying of thirst and I'm told that I can't have anything to eat or drink because I was scheduled for surgery ASAP but they didn't exactly know what time that would be. Hours go by. Sometime between late Saturday and early Sunday, my temperature spikes. Vitals are taken, antibiotics and Tylenol on board, more IVs added to my tree, more blood was drawn and I'm feeling like a pin cushion. Something I couldn't control was happening to my body and I felt extremely helpless. (Oh! I forgot to mention the ever-present heart monitor. Any movements out of the bed apparently made my heartbeat increase and whoever was monitoring it kept calling the nurse in charge to check on me. I think my heart was pranking them the whole time I was there. Ha!)

Time never moved so slowly before. Lots of poking, prodding, answering questions and waiting. The question of the day was, "When did you start having pain?". I kept saying about 2am Saturday morning but that wasn't the answer they were looking for. I guess I was supposed to have had pain for weeks prior but all I had was bloating...for months but no real pain.

I finally have the surgery and found out that my gallbladder was 50% dead. How did I walk around with 50% of my gallbladder not functioning and not really feel it? (I think it was all the Korean ginseng I was taking. LOL) And why am I waking up to a 6 inch open wound?