OUCH!

I'd like to let everyone know what I've been up to for the last couple days. Really it started back in May of this year when I woke up in the middle of the night with severe upper abdominal pain. I couldn't shake it, ibuprofen and tylenol didn't help so after 4 hours of unrelenting pain I went to the ER where they gave me an anti-inflammatory through an IV and I felt better. After talking to the doc, we decided that I had pulled a muscle while trying to get an old chain saw started the day before.


Fast forward to Labor day and I'm camping 35 miles of gnarly dirt road away from the nearest sign of civilization (easy to do in Wyoming) and I get the same pain. I was incapacitated for about 8 hours. I suppose I should describe this pain, it starts in the back just below your shoulder blades and feels like you [i]really[/i] need to pop it for it to feel better. Then it stays there, but spreads to the front of your chest just south of your xiphoid process (the bottom of your sternum) and aches and aches and aches and aches. It doesn't matter what you do, lay down, stand up, sit, crawl, moan, cry.. anything, it just hurts. =( Now I've felt worse pain before, but you know how they ask you at the hospital what level of pain you're feeling? 1 for nothing, 10 for the worst you've ever felt, well imagine and 8 that [b]never[/b] goes away. It just hurts, continually. So I was about to have my dad drive me into town when I started to feel better and decided I'd go to the Dr some other time so I didn't have to ruin everyone's camping trip.

Skip to Sunday night, and I wake up with the pain at about 4:00 in the morning and take some ibuprofen and it goes away. I have Wednesdays off and decide that since it came back for a 3rd time I'd go see a doc on my day off. Tuesday morning at about 4:30 it wakes me up again. This time, no drugs help and it gets worse. I'm sitting on my couch at about a 9 on the pain scale and I have to go to school to turn in my homework then go to work. I drive for about 30 minutes to school drop my homework off and by this time I'm almost throwing up the pain is so bad. So I call work and tell them that I'm not coming in and that I was going to the emergency room.

Luckily for me, our city just got a HUGE level 1 trauma center / mega hospital and transferred all the patients from the hospital closest to my work there. I get right into the ER, and they admit me. 30 minutes later I'm getting an ultrasound and they tell me that I've got gall stones. I'm only 28 and eat relatively healthy and I thought this was something only old people got. I figured that I'd have to pass a gall stone since I've heard people say things like that before. So the doc comes in and tells me that I need surgery that day (yesterday) or else I'll be back the next day with the same pain, probably worse. Again because nobody is at this hospital, they tell me that I can get in there right away and I consent. It was pretty scary being wheeled into the operating room and being put under. Especially considering that I had just enough time to call my wife and tell her to meet me when I got out.

Surgery lasted about an hour, they cut a hole under my belly button, and 3 more up top, filled my abdominal cavity with air and worked with their tools and scopes to crush up the gall stones and then remove my gall bladder. :scared: I guess it beats a huge gash in my side just to get it out though.

I'm all hopped up on pain pills now and I should be getting better, but I'm sore as hell. Sorry for the lengthy post, but hopefully if someone reads this then gets the pain I did (we're all pretty young and not used to the idea of organ failure) they'll remember reading this and get it taken care of.



[[[CLIFFS]]]
Weird pain for several months. Went to the ER. Had surgery to remove my gall bladder.