Time For Surgery

Even though Natalie and I were starting to feel we have been through so many personal turmoils this year and that it can only get better, we were reminded of how it is possible for life to continue the seemingly neverending and challenging course of perpetual misadventures when I suddenly fell extremely ill on Tuesday morning.

I woke up to sudden excruciating abdominal and chest pain and knew I wouldn’t be able to make it to work. I got home from work late the night before and ate a small snack around 11:30 PM after I arrived. I thought my morning experience was merely a result of my own poor choices in the timing of eating right before I went to sleep.

I suffered at home for about four more hours until I finally realized I wasn’t going to be able to continue like this without medical help. At this point, I called Natalie back home to pick me up and take me to the emergency room at our local hospital. She picked me up off the bathroom floor, and we headed to the hospital, only a three-minute drive at most.

I immediately received Morphine and other pain medications, and the staff started working me up for a variety of possible reasons for my symptoms. Having recently survived COVID-19, one of the more worrisome thoughts was that I had a pulmonary embolism. Other possibilities were a ruptured diverticulum or ulcer, pancreatitis, or bowel obstruction. The initial workup failed to make the diagnosis, but luckily some of the more concerning possibilities had been excluded by the CT performed that morning.

Without a diagnosis, I was admitted to the hospital for pain management and observation and was personally beginning to think that I was a giant weenie for having the pain I had and a “negative” workup. And all the while, I was writhing in pain in front of my peers that knew me, and I started to have a complex about what their thoughts would be of me when it turned out there was nothing wrong. Was I overreacting?

I had surgical and GI consultations later that evening to see if there was anything else to could consider. As soon as the surgeon walked into my room, I immediately apologized that he was even consulted, and I said, “I am definitely NOT a surgical case.” He examined me and agreed that he couldn’t find anything on my exam that would warrant his involvement, but he would continue to follow me and see how I did overnight.

The gastroenterologist then did an extensive history and physical exam and said,” You know, even though you don’t have the classic presentation, we really should do an ultrasound of your liver and gallbladder and make sure that the gallbladder isn’t the cause for all this. My bilirubin was a little elevated, and this could suggest that perhaps there was a stone in my common bile duct, which would cause pain over time.

On Wednesday morning, during my ultrasound examination, I reviewed my images with the tech, and I immediately knew I wasn’t crazy after all! My gallbladder looked horrible and was packed with stones. Cholecystitis and cholelithiasis! Later that morning, the surgeon walked back into the room, and we both laughed at my comment to him the night before. Within a few hours, I found myself in surgery, being prepared for a laparoscopic cholecystectomy.

I’m home, and it’s been a few days since I was discharged; and although I’m not nearly back to my baseline, I am feeling MUCH better than I did on Tuesday morning. I have one more day off work and start back on Tuesday, October 27th, with just some minor incisional pain that is very tolerable.

I can’t thank the staff at Memorial Hospital (my workplace) that took terrific care of me during my stay. Despite feeling worse than I ever have, I was always comforted by their level of compassion and care throughout the entire ordeal.