Life Intrudes

The posts have been sparse since last Monday because I spent that evening writhing around in pain at home and then in the ER at Franklin Square before being admitted Tuesday. After doing blood work and an ultrasound early Tuesday it was determined that I had a very large gallstone and that my gallbladder needed to be removed.

Before I continue the narrative from this past week, I’ll hit some background from the past week or two.

Two weeks ago from today, I was studying calculus in the library when I started feeling a little queasy. I had just eaten lunch and figured something disagreed with me but as the feeling increased over the course of the afternoon I started thinking something else was wrong. By the time I left school to go home I was in pain and having shortness of breath and we had to pull over once on 95 when I was feeling nauseous. I hit the Pepto when we got home and my wife went to the nearest pharmacy to get some other things we were out of. Looking back, I made the mistake of eating some cereal which made things worse. I rolled around on the bed and couch trying to get comfortable. The pain was intense and I vomited 3-4 times with a funny taste in the back of my throat before each time.

We thought it could possibly be gallbladder-related but it also could have been something else. I was having pains in my back which I attributed to my shifting around trying to get comfortable (since I have back pain already anyway) and the pain was shifting from the center of my abdomen to the the sides and back with the shifts in position resulting in some minor relief or gurgling and then right back to the pain. The next morning I didn’t feel great but wasn’t in pain. I stayed on diet of toast, crackers, ginger ale and Powerade/Gatorade that day while I stayed at home. My wife called from work saying she wasn’t feeling good either and that it was stomach-related so we figured I’d gotten a virus somewhere and given it to her. That could still be the case, but I was also having gallbladder issues as well that were possibly triggered by some of the grilled and fried food at a family picnic for my brother-in-law’s 10th anniversary the Sunday before.

I had a couple of minor issues the rest of that week and we went to Red Lobster for dinner Friday evening and had the Parrot Bay rum-battered Fried Shrimp (along with a caesar salad, the cheddar rolls and fries.) I had some apparent heartburn the next morning and took some Maalox and didn’t really have anything bad happen. We did go to the Perry Hall Town Fair that afternoon and I had a cheesesteak from Ostrowski’s there while my wife had kielbasa. Sunday we went to a birthday party just across the Pennsylvania line from Wilmington, Delaware and had pretty light fare there and then when we got back to town we went t0 my in-laws and had thawed out wedding cake from last summer since it was our first anniversary. When we got home, I finished off my leftovers from Red Lobster.

I woke up the next morning with a slight stomach ache but couldn’t get much release until I drank some ginger ale and ate some toast. I still wasn’t feeling great on the way in (and I’d shifted my work schedule to not go in until Tuesday after class so I could study for a test Tuesday) so I just nursed some ginger ale and crackers again while I looked over my material for the test. The pain got bad at times but never as bad as it had the week before. By about noon, things had cleared up enough that I shifted over to the library to study until late in the afternoon when things flared up again. I finally had to stop studying and go outside and try to walk around some (and snapped some pictures of geese outside) while I waited for my wife to get there (since we carpool most days.)

The ride home was painful and when I got home my shifting around on the bed and the couch just as the week before started again. The pain both Mondays was like nothing I’d had before (the closest thing in retrospect was what I thought was just gas pain after dinner on my birthday back in December.) Things kept getting worse and finally about 11:30 I told my wife I thought it was gallbladder definitely and that it had been the week before too. I knew it was something I’d never experienced anything like before (and I had a duodenal ulcer in late 1994.) I felt nauseous without vomiting a couple of times and had a strange salty taste in the back of my throat. The pain was shifting around to my back.

We debated on whether to go to the Emergency Room because of the wait, the cost and the fact that I had no health insurance (this ended up not being a big factor - but it did go through my thought processes.) Thanks to the situation I found myself in last fall I had to take out a nearly $4,000 private loan (on top of student loans) just to afford tuition since I followed bad advice and completed my FAFSA post-marriage and then I was considered out of state (which is nearly a $5K difference per semester.) Pre-marriage and at my last school in S.C., I was Pell Grant eligible.

My wife just started a new job a couple of months before our wedding and when she finally was able to get health insurance, it wasn’t feasible to pay the amount to add me because of the other financial issues we had going on. I finally got residency in the spring which also caused me to become eligible for some other state aid that I’m going to get beginning in the fall. I got a refund check after the residency was granted and had been saving my money, planning on doing things like upgrading to a new computer as well as buy insurance in August for the whole year through school.

We ultimately decided that the only way to find out for sure and get possible relief would be to go to the ER and that if things were bad enough and I went to a family doctor the next day I could just as easily end up back at the hospital. So we left for Franklin Square just around 11:30 last Monday night and I signed in about 5 ’til midnight.

The receptionist asked for my name and just wrote down one line about symptoms. I stated for the first of several times over the next few days that I was private pay. I sat down in an uncomfortable chair and tried to get in the position that was the least painless. I walked around, went to the rest room, got cold water and even went outside in search of fresh air (just once until I found out how miserable and muggy it was outside compared to inside.)

Finally, about 45 minutes later my name was called and I went back to an office for triage. My blood pressure was a little high on the top number and my temperate was below 98. I went through the pain the week before and that night and then got sent back out to wait some more. My wife says I was dozing during this part of the wait and I probably was since the pain had subsided into general discomfort in the abdomen. By the time I got called to go back to an ER room. This was in a section with several rooms with a door opening on each side to parallel halls. There was a curtain down the middle an all the instruments and intubation kits and everything else were in baskets hanging on the wall behind both rickety gurneys with a sheet and blanket. I think they took my vitals then and when a nurse finally got in the room and I told the whole story for a second time she said, “It sounds like it’s probably acid reflux.”

She said that again later which had me somewhat relieved and had my wife giving me a hard time. A P.A. came in and ordered some blood work to see what was going on. I ended up getting stuck and having a large amount of blood (in my opinion) drawn and then some painkiller injected in the IV tube. The P.A. came in again and poked and prodded me and said it sounded like gallbladder to him. The nurse came in later and said I had an elevated white cell count and they were probably going to keep me until later that day to do an ultrasound to see what was going on.

About 8, I went down the hall for the ultrasound. Sometime between 9 and 10 a doctor came in and told me they were trying to get ahold of the surgeon on duty to see if they should admit me. The radiologist saw a very large gallstone and it looked infected. The doctor who talked to me assumed I was going to be admitted. The doctor and nurses were both asking me exactly how I had reacted to penicillin before that had me saying I was allergic to it. They gave me a penicillin derivative to fight the infection and told me to buzz them immediately if I had any reaction at all to it. The surgeon on duty came in later that morning and said he was going to admit me and do surgery either that day or Wednesday (between the condition I was in and his heavy accent that was about all I could understand.)

For now, I’ll add a side note about the gentleman who shared the room with me most of the night and morning. When they brought him in very early Tuesday morning via ambulance they were noting that it was his second trip to the ER that day and asked him if he had been drinking again and he said yes. This time they admitted him because of the test results and he was whisked away to a room late in the morning right after a lady came around to catalog both our possessions. About an hour later, my gurney was wheeled to a space in the hall in a triage area next to a call button. People were sitting there talking an yukking it up right next to me until when they finally left, the nurse came out and closed the curtains around me.

I spent a good part of the afternoon in that hallway in the ER getting more antibiotics and getting the rest of the info on my upcoming surgery from the P.A. from the surgical group (who really did an excellent job.) They started putting fluid in me that afternoon as well since they were keeping me fasting because of the possibility of surgery that day. My wife had left before I was moved into the hall so she could get some rest and because we were having the HVAC guy come replace our heat pump that afternoon (when it rains it pours.)

Sometime before 4, I was wheeled up to a room on the 3rd floor and I was still getting antibiotics and Ringer’s in my IV. I had a roommate when I got there, but he was already talking about leaving that night. He’d had the same surgery I was having a few weeks earlier but apparently had some strange complications that had them testing for some weird and funky things to figure out what had happened. He was gone before my in-laws even got there to visit me. My wife arrived soon after them and then later my wife’s aunt and uncle visited and the room was getting a bit crowded.

The rooms weren’t much different than when I visited my mother-in-law in the hospital last fall, but they had changed the beds recently and added a separate flat screen TV with cable and 4 satellite radio channels for each bed. Strangely, the cable service included both DC and Baltimore broadcast channels way over on this side of town. As it got later and more apparent that the surgery wasn’t going to happen that day, my in-laws asked about food but the doctor’s order hadn’t changed yet. I was still not allowed anything by mouth. Even after we found out the surgery wasn’t until the next day it took a bit for me to be able to get food. It was jello, Italian ice and Sprite until midnight.

I don’t remember being interrupted for vitals during the night but I did wake up with a beeping IV machine and then they came in to do my vitals after that. After a comedy of errors in getting my gown on (since they said the transportation to the OR came early sometimes), I was waiting around most of the morning for 11. My mother-in-law got there just before the OR transport arrived and then she almost had to run to keep up with the guy to find out where the OR and surgical waiting areas were. When I first got there, the woman who shaved me was all worried about having to shave so much and asked me if it looked okay when she was done (that was weird to me.)

My wife’s cousin (the priest who married us) showed up and went through the Sacrament of the Sick and put oil on my hands and forehead. The anesthesiologist came in and went through his whole routine and had me sign the consent form and then the same surgeon I had seen the day before came in and had me sign the consent form and went through the long list of possible risks and side effects and had me sign consent forms that would allow him to do the laparoscopic procedure and, if necessary, the old-fashioned cutting style of gallbladder removal. The OR nurse came in and ushered me with my IV pole to the restroom to void my bladder and then they put me back on the gurney for the trip to the operating room.

When I got to the OR, there was one other nurse along with the surgeon and the anesthesiologist. They maneuvered me onto the table and told me to put my feet on one end and put my head in the blue foam circle at the other end. I put my arms out in the supports and felt a warm tingle in my IV as they put the warm blankets over me. The next moment I remember was already back in my room in my bed - so I totally forgot the recovery room an transport back to my room assuming I was at least semi-conscious for some of it.

I think I stayed on antibiotics and fluid for the rest of the stay after that and I got another roommate sometime that afternoon. I never really found out what he was in for but he was gone Thursday morning. I did get jello and Italian ice again Wednesday night and I ended up staying awake pretty late that night. I woke up sometime in the night to find the nurse putting me back on oxygen and also putting my legs in those leggings that vibrate/rotate for circulation. Thursday itself was anti-climactic with more sitting around with fluid and antibiotics in my arm. I did get to eat solid food again that day with eggs and oatmeal for breakfast, chicken with ham on top for lunch, and beef with barbeque sauce for dinner.

We did talk to a social worker that day who brought forms for us to fill out within 15 days relating to assistance with the bill because of my lack of insurance. There are some 100% grants given but I don’t think we’re eligible because of our income level. There may be some other assistance available and at the very least some sort of payment plan can be set up. I didn’t know about those kinds of things before until I had a wreck in 2004 and when I went to the ER (this was in South Carolina) a few days later and had a CT scan and concussion diagnosis, a large part of my bill was later knocked off.

As the afternoon wore on Thursday, I did get up and walk down the hall a bit but it looked like I was going to be spending another night in the hospital since I hadn’t even seen my doctor since surgery.  The first time the night nurse (shifts change there at 7 and 7) came to the room that night he asked me if I needed something for pain and told me that I would be going home that night. I got the pain meds injected and waited for the doctor to show up (he’d been performing surgery at another hospital in the area and had to leave there, get dinner and come to Franklin Square for rounds.)  My in-laws left to go back home after another visit and I was waiting, along with my wife. I joked around with my third roommate (who I think had moved back into a regular room after being in ICU following hip surgery of some kind.) I want to say I got home sometime around 9 that night and I’ve been pretty vegetative since then.

My wife picked my percocet prescription up that night. I went to my in-laws for an early dinner Sunday and I came back to class today. Since I missed a test last week and the final exam is scheduled for the end of this week I’m going to end up with an incomplete when the grades are posted. I could put both the test and the final off until fall but I’m probably going to make the test up this week before the class ends and then do the final early in the fall semester since I already have 13-14 hours plus work during fall. So, I’ll be returning to work next week now and not ratcheting it up quite as much as I was going to so that I can get ready for the final in early September. I may even get a tutor just to keep me fresh on the material. The best I could have hoped for would’ve been doing it all sometime in late July and early August but the professor isn’t going to be around then.

To sum up the hospital experience, I was very well pleased with my treatment and care at Franklin Square and I’m singling out some of the exemplary staff in my comment card that I’ll be sending in. The ER staff as well as the floor an ER staff were all great. There were some communications issues with the doctor the night before my surgery and the night I was going home but most of that seemed to be because of how booked his schedule was with other surgeries at various hospitals in town.

I didn’t make this post as an attempt at sympathy or as a bleg (or request for money.) I posted it to review the whole week for anyone that might be interested since the brief amount of information I’m able to impart anyone who asked what happened or how I’m doing doesn’t cover it all. I also wanted to get it all down in written form as a cathartic exercise as well as to have something to remember from it (I didn’t get the gallstone - at least not yet.) If anyone has any general feedback on the topics I mentioned, especially the medical and financial ones, feel free to leave a comment below.

The blog should return back to normal topics in the coming days.  Thanks for bearing with me on this one post.