Surgery Here I Come

Well my semester is fully underway with multiple exams every week, study time and clinical days. Dal continues to enjoy school and we all enjoy our Friday family fun nights, FHE, going to the park, kids museum, and any other little family time we can get.

I guess our life needed a little bit more excitement though because in the last several months I have had a few episodes of excruciating upper abdominal pain. The pain was so intense it felt like I was in labor, having one major contraction that I didn't get a break from for a couple of hours. I could hardly breathe. The last episode I had was in January and it was late at night and I almost went to the ER but luckily I found some leftover Loritab from when I had Braelyn. It took the edge off the pain enough for me to not have Jake get the kids out of bed and take a family trip to the ER. By this point though I knew that something was definitely wrong.

In my self-diagnosing internet research I determined that it was something with my gall bladder, probably gall stones. So I set an appointment with a GI doctor and when he came in the room I hardly got two sentences out before he said it was probably my gall bladder and I needed to have an ultrasound. Prior to my ultrasound I watched a you tube video of a gall bladder ultrasound so that I would know what stones looked like on the ultrasound. The ultrasound lady showed me the gall bladder and sure enough there were a bunch of glowing white stones on the ultrasound. Usually they aren't supposed to say anything until the Dr. looks at it but she told me that I have multiple gall stones. I was not at all surprised. I was bummed because I knew surgery would be the recommendation yet at the same time I was relieved knowing what had caused my horrible pain.

A little picture of a gall bladder with stones

So of course the doctor recommended surgery. I did some research on it and other possible options. Some people choose to use natural remedies or not-so-natural remedies to try to remove the stones on their own. The problem with those it seems is that the stones will most likely keep on coming back and you have to continue to deal with them. The cause of stones varies but it can be genetics (which are definitely against me because my mom and both grandma's have had their gall bladders removed) the good old hormones estrogen and progesterone (which is why gall stones are so much more common in women especially recently after having a baby) and other things. Looking at some of the possible causes made me realize that if I didn't have surgery I would probably always have to deal with gall bladder issues. The kicker for me though was the complications that can occur if you don't have surgery. A stone can get stuck in the bile duct and cause a major infection or it can get stuck in the pancreas and cause pancreatitis, which can lead to a lot of very serious problems. The Dr. also explained to me that after you have your gall bladder removed your body kind of compensates and part of your small intestines almost forms a little sac (like a mini gall bladder) to hold a little extra bile.

So we decided that surgery would be the best option. I am really nervous because I have never had surgery before (aside from wisdom teeth removal). It seems so weird that they are going to be removing one of my organs and then hope that my body adjusts and functions normally (which for many people it does). I am going to have the laparoscopic surgery which is the less invasive one. The surgeon will make 3-4 small incisions, I will be blown up with carbon dioxide gas and then he will use a mini-scope to see inside and other instruments to clip off and pull out the gall bladder. When the surgeon was explaining it and when I watched a you tube animation of it it seemed pretty freaky to me! I feel a little better knowing my surgeon has a reputation for being the best on the city and he does 200-300 of these surgeries a year.

This is where the incisions will be made

This is where the scope goes in and some of the other instruments

So I am scheduled for surgery this Wednesday at 8:00 am. A nice lady from church offered to watch the kids so that Jake can be there with me when I wake up. We are praying that all will go well and that I recover quickly because in my program it would be really hard to miss hardly any school or clinical days. So surgery here I come!

I couldn't leave a blog post without throwing in a couple cute pics of the kids so...

The kids hiding place during a game of hide and seek

My good-bye party before I head out the door to school

Braelyn gives me the cutest little sad hugs when I leave and then she gives me the most energetic and excited hugs when I get home :)