Listen up--There's a lesson here!

Hi, everyone!

As I write this, the events of last Tuesday and Wednesday are a bit of a blur, and for good reason. A lot of that period has been spent under a cloud of painkillers!

Let me go back a bit...this whole thing actually started last July, in what I thought was simply a bad gas cramp. It cropped up again in December, and started to become more of an issue off and on a few weeks back. I went to the doctor, who felt (based on what I told him) that it might be a “functional blockage” in my intestines, and I should be okay so long as Gas-X was taking care of my symptoms, and if it continued to go to the emergency room and get x-rayed.

Thursday the 9th of April, while at a rehearsal for the Harmony of the Gorge (A Sweet Adeline chorus I direct) I had what I thought was another really annoying gas cramp.


Except this one was so bad it took five hours to die down, and at one point I thought I was going to pass out. But I got through it, and was feeling better on the way home.

Then on Monday the 13th, everything came to a halt. My beautiful and charming bride and I were walking at Gateway mall when I decided that something was most definitely wrong. We determined that a trip to the emergency room was in order.

We arrived at 7 PM. About 9 PM, they gave me a shot of morphine to unbend me enough to take an ultrasound. By midnight, I had been admitted to Sacred Heart-Riverbend, with a gall bladder that was “inflamed” and had “sludge and stones.” I underwent the emergency removal operation the next day, where they found that my gall bladder was pretty well infected, too. I also had some blood in the bed where the gallbladder had been sitting. In short...I was in worse shape than the ultrasound showed. I spent the rest of Tuesday night and most of Wednesday at the hospital, and finally went home on Wednesday night. I’m on antibiotics for the next 5 days or so, and painkillers on an “as-needed” basis. I am also taking the rest of the week off, and will be on light duty all next week.

So, why share all this with you all?

Because I probably should have had this looked at a lot sooner than I did. The lesson I am giving here is pretty simple: If something doesn’t feel right, have it checked out sooner than later.

Enough for now.

(Posted 4/17/09)