catching-up ....

Hello everyone!

Whoa, it has been over a month since I posted anything ... that might just be a record for me!  But, I have a bit of an excuse... unfortunately, I was in the hospital for 4 days, and then had some recovery time afterwards.

In mid-May, Sal and I were minutes away from leaving home to drive to Tampa to attend a chemistry conference ... his entire research group was presenting their work, pretty exciting!  Unfortunately, Sal didn't get to attend any of it.  We had just finished packing the car and I was gathering Buddy's medicines to pack, when I got the most excruciating pain in my upper abdomen.  This was no ordinary "tummy ache"!  I was trying to lay down, let it subside, but it wasn't getting any better ... and then I got pale ... and shaky.  Something was definitely WRONG!  Thankfully, this didn't happen while we were on the road.

Sal took me to the ER ... after 2 strong doses of morphine (thank Heaven for it!), I finally was calmed and out of pain.  I was in such pain that I was thrashing and ripped out the IV catheter that had been inserted in the back of my hand; the nurse had to put another one into my arm as Sal tried to keep me still.  And I was so frightened ... I had never been to the hospital before (lucky, I know!) and was worried about the cause of this.  A CT scan quickly revealed that I had gallstones and some of those rascals, especially a large one, had escaped out of my gallbladder and into a bile duct --- OUCH !!  The good news was that this was curable, not life-threatening ... we don't "need" our gallbladders to live.

So, long story short, I had to have 2 surgeries ... one to remove the stones from the duct, and then another to remove that pesky gallbladder.  Surgery also made me nervous, I was trying to wrap my mind around all of this!

Sal sweetly brought me newspapers, which I love to read, but I didn't have the energy

But with Sal's love and help during and after, I am back to normal, back to the lab ... back to LIFE!

 

I'm not exactly sure why I didn't blog about this sooner?  I think I just really wasn't in the mood to "re-visit" the whole ordeal.  It kind of stunned me ...  not to mention the afterthought of the disappointment of missing the conference (and the spa appointment I had booked in the beautiful resort that was the conference venue) {sigh}

But thanks for listening ... and thank you so much to everyone for your thoughts, prayers, cards, calls, e-mails, and text messages to check on me.  They were SO appreciated !!

Enjoy today,
Susan