So, anyway, the night of the 28th of January, I’ve got this major heartburn that just won’t stop – relentless, searing pain that feels like it’s coming in through my stomach and going all the way to my backbone, where it feels like someone is jabbing a hot knife into the spaces between the vertebrae from my lower to mid back. This was the culmination of five days of similar problems that started the previous Saturday, but seemed to decrease for about the next four days afterward.
Naturally, off to the hospital I go, and check myself into Triage at the Emergency Room. Naturally, since I didn’t have any arms off or wasn’t bleeding all over, I enter the line at about fourth, displacing a few people with lesser symptoms, and it only takes about an hour to see a doctor, because there actually were a couple of people that showed up during that time were actually bleeding.
When I do get the call to go in, they immediately give me something for the pain which has continued to be white-hot since I got there, and this turns out to be morphine, but not in a high enough concentration to make me happy, just enough to take the edge off. I’m kind of suspecting gall bladder, and so is the doctor after taking a history, so on we go to diagnostics, with me receiving a CT scan, and an ultrasound, a few more shots of morphine, and surrendering numerous blood samples. At about five am, they wheel me up to a room, with the idea that surgery may occur the next day.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t, because like everything else, you are triaged and put into a sequence, and if something else happens (like a bad MVA), you can get displaced, which is what happens in my case. All it really means is that I am in a holding pattern, waiting for a spot when I can be taken care of. More shots of morphine and heparin follow, not to mention numerous IV bags, until the next morning when they arrive at about 9 am to tell me that I’m going to the OR that morning within the next two hours.
Sure enough, they are wheeling me down about 90 minutes later, and about three hours later, I wake up in recovery, with a dry throat and a tube coming out of my nose. A nurse sees me wake up, and tells me not to talk, and that she will get me some ice chips; before long, they are taking me back upstairs. The rest of the day passes slowly and I’ve always got an IV bag on the go, but I’ve really got no pain, other than the fact that the right side of my stomach is stiff. Since I’m not up walking around, more heparin to prevent blood clots in the legs. The tube coming out my nose, I soon discover, is linked to a bag on the bottom of my IV rack into which there is a seemingly never-ending supply of a greenish-brownish colored fluid moving through, occasionally with small black specks floating by, looking like someone’s weird impression of Goldschlager gone wrong.
Sleeping is off and on, but the next day is better; I’m up walking up and down the hallway, since although my side is stiff, my legs are fine. It is at about this time that I make a startling realization: although I haven’t had a cigarette since the night I was admitted, I don’t even have the craving for one. I get no food that day, unfortunately, just more IV bags, but I’m hopeful for the next day.
The next morning, I actually get a breakfast tray! Okay, it’s only a small amount of oatmeal with flax, some cherry jello, a small container of cranberry juice and a mug of tea, it’s a start. I eat with relish, and it stays down fine. Still no cigarette cravings, which is not a bad thing. Lunch, when it arrives is more of the same – an entree, in this case, Chicken A La King, served with tea or coffee, juice, a dessert and toast (this type of meal makeup continues over the next two days, with such entrees as herbed fusilli and Italian vegetables and a baked veal cutlet, a baked barbecue port cutlet and mashed potatoes and peas, scrambled eggs and cereal at breakfast time with toast, etc.). Even better, that day they take the tube out of my nose.
Things get better until Thursday afternoon, when they tell me I can go home, and I’m out the door within two hours, after seeing the doctor and getting a post-op talk on how to take care of myself until the following week, when I have to go and get my staples out.
Leaving is a breeze. My wife comes to pick me up and we leave.
The whole thing has cost me nothing, money-wise. I’ve left behind an inflamed gall bladder and two stones the size of golf balls, and I still haven’t had the urge to have a smoke.
It seems I’ve gotten more out of the experience than I’ve really had to put in.
