Observations from a hospital bed
It was a short, intense, indescribably painful sequence of events that had me in the ambulance on Wednesday morning, ER through the day, then a very nice third-floor room by that evening.
Sparing you the projectile, moany groany details, let's just cut to the part where I got some very necessary surgery done sooner than expected and am recovering well at this moment.
Spending fifty hours in a hospital, during some of which I was doped up on some pretty high-profile stuff, made my mind go a thousand directions.
Here are the ones I remember.
ER sounds
Beeping, shuffling, rolling, blood pressure cuff doing its thing, chatter outside the curtain that you can't really make out. It was a surprisingly soothing combo, as easy to sleep to as the background mumble of a baseball game. If I was more motivated, I'd invent a white noise machine with an ER setting for sure.
Nurses
Nurses could be paid Lebron James' salary and it still wouldn't be enough. Those folks, at least the few dozen nurses I encountered during my stay, were polite and respectful and compassionate and ready to serve and kept a super-patient face on when I, um, had trouble figuring out the bed pan. They have my utmost respect for many, many different reasons.
Gallbladder
I had never even acknowledged the presence of such an organ until my second attack two weeks ago. Writhing in pain at 3am, I went to WebMD to see how quickly I might die, and after typing in the symptoms, the only thing that came up was gallbladder. Y'all, the gallbladder is no joke. At all. My ignorant misuse of it, especially over the last year, brought me to the point where my only choice was to have it out. And though it is considered a very common, minor surgery, it would probably be a better idea just to show your gallbladder the love it deserves before it decides to go postal on you.
Morphine
I get it now, y'all. How people can be addicted to painkillers. The first dose around 10 on Wednesday morning took the edge off for a while, then I was back in pain by noon. They doubled the dose, and oh. my. lanta. It felt like I could no longer move any part of my body and that was so fine with me. I felt heavy and warm and tingly and no pain at all for the first time in fourteen hours. Magic. Granted, of course it would be great never to need any again. But if ever I do, well, that will be a good few minutes.
Blue gloves
They come in what looks like a tissue box, a tissue box that hardly ever has a moment to rest. Surely they go through ten thousand pairs a day, even just at our humble small-city hospital. Whoever invented those, or the thermometer covers, or the little sterile plastic packaging surrounding any and every tool, is sitting pretty right now. Such a simple concept, and job security forever. Why didn't I think of that?
Other people's conversations
I was in pre-op for two hours, waiting on another operation to finish. Pre-op is just a bunch of beds lined up against the wall with a curtain to separate them. And so it was for two hours, Brandon and I got to listen to this woman talk about food. She was waiting for her mother to go into surgery, and food is all she talked about for two hours. There we were, Brandon surviving off vending machine snacks and me having had nothing for two days straight, inadvertently eavesdropping on what must have been a rundown of her eating month. Know your surroundings, people.
Prayer and care
Never before have I felt so much love coming my way, even for something so relatively minor. Grandparents taking over the boys like champs, my mom cleaning my house and cooking and laundry, Brandon sleeping the night in a "recliner" next to my bed, community friends texting me, basketball family texting Brandon. I can't even put into words how much that meant. And as they rolled me into that cold, stark operating room, me reciting Psalm 23 in my head, I physically felt the prayers.
So here we are. I'm following instructions, moving around as much as I can before tiring out and feeling much less pain than I thought I would. The badozens of people who told me their gallbladder stories when I first started having problems have all, for the most part, said that having the surgery was one of the best things they have ever done.
So I'm counting on it. Goodbye, gallbladder. Thanks for trying.
Sparing you the projectile, moany groany details, let's just cut to the part where I got some very necessary surgery done sooner than expected and am recovering well at this moment.
Spending fifty hours in a hospital, during some of which I was doped up on some pretty high-profile stuff, made my mind go a thousand directions.
Here are the ones I remember.
ER sounds
Beeping, shuffling, rolling, blood pressure cuff doing its thing, chatter outside the curtain that you can't really make out. It was a surprisingly soothing combo, as easy to sleep to as the background mumble of a baseball game. If I was more motivated, I'd invent a white noise machine with an ER setting for sure.
Nurses
Nurses could be paid Lebron James' salary and it still wouldn't be enough. Those folks, at least the few dozen nurses I encountered during my stay, were polite and respectful and compassionate and ready to serve and kept a super-patient face on when I, um, had trouble figuring out the bed pan. They have my utmost respect for many, many different reasons.
Gallbladder
I had never even acknowledged the presence of such an organ until my second attack two weeks ago. Writhing in pain at 3am, I went to WebMD to see how quickly I might die, and after typing in the symptoms, the only thing that came up was gallbladder. Y'all, the gallbladder is no joke. At all. My ignorant misuse of it, especially over the last year, brought me to the point where my only choice was to have it out. And though it is considered a very common, minor surgery, it would probably be a better idea just to show your gallbladder the love it deserves before it decides to go postal on you.
Morphine
I get it now, y'all. How people can be addicted to painkillers. The first dose around 10 on Wednesday morning took the edge off for a while, then I was back in pain by noon. They doubled the dose, and oh. my. lanta. It felt like I could no longer move any part of my body and that was so fine with me. I felt heavy and warm and tingly and no pain at all for the first time in fourteen hours. Magic. Granted, of course it would be great never to need any again. But if ever I do, well, that will be a good few minutes.
Blue gloves
They come in what looks like a tissue box, a tissue box that hardly ever has a moment to rest. Surely they go through ten thousand pairs a day, even just at our humble small-city hospital. Whoever invented those, or the thermometer covers, or the little sterile plastic packaging surrounding any and every tool, is sitting pretty right now. Such a simple concept, and job security forever. Why didn't I think of that?
Other people's conversations
I was in pre-op for two hours, waiting on another operation to finish. Pre-op is just a bunch of beds lined up against the wall with a curtain to separate them. And so it was for two hours, Brandon and I got to listen to this woman talk about food. She was waiting for her mother to go into surgery, and food is all she talked about for two hours. There we were, Brandon surviving off vending machine snacks and me having had nothing for two days straight, inadvertently eavesdropping on what must have been a rundown of her eating month. Know your surroundings, people.
Prayer and care
Never before have I felt so much love coming my way, even for something so relatively minor. Grandparents taking over the boys like champs, my mom cleaning my house and cooking and laundry, Brandon sleeping the night in a "recliner" next to my bed, community friends texting me, basketball family texting Brandon. I can't even put into words how much that meant. And as they rolled me into that cold, stark operating room, me reciting Psalm 23 in my head, I physically felt the prayers.
So here we are. I'm following instructions, moving around as much as I can before tiring out and feeling much less pain than I thought I would. The badozens of people who told me their gallbladder stories when I first started having problems have all, for the most part, said that having the surgery was one of the best things they have ever done.
So I'm counting on it. Goodbye, gallbladder. Thanks for trying.
Comments