My First Surgery

I have only ever been in the hospital twice (ok, three times if you count when I was born). The first time was right before my mission when my kidney's failed. I spent 5 days at the University of Utah medical center. The second time was yesterday.

For two years I have had an occasional intense pain in my abdomen. It would last for a couple of hours and was accompanied by a whole lot of throwing up. I had three tests to see if the pain was my gallbladder, but everything came back negative.

A little over a week ago it started to get pretty bad. The vomiting and the pain would last all night, so I went to the doctor again. This time she told me to see a specialist and scheduled an appointment for the 27th of July. Well, at 4:00 yesterday morning, after a whole night of pain and puking, I drove myself to the emergency room. They gave me something for pain and did another ultra sound which showed that my gallbladder was full of stones. About 3 pm I went in for surgery.

The hospital stay was pretty uneventful except for the 15 minutes right before surgery. The man who came to take me to the OR crashed into the wall at least 22 times on the way down. He kept saying that the bed was broken, but it was most definitely his driving. In the process, he disconnected my IV which had to then be removed and put in my other arm.

Then they discovered no one had done a pregnancy test and no amount of talk on my part that it was an absolute impossibility for me to be pregnant, would convince them. So, once that was taken care of the nurse noticed while we were standing in the hall that I still had my pj's on. She told me they had to come off. "Right here in the hall?", I questioned. She thought twice and decided the bottoms could be removed in a more private place. Then she asked me when the last time was that I emptied my bladder. This was the same nurse who had just escorted me to the bathroom for the urine sample that they needed for the pregnancy test.

I finally got into the operating room, got on the bed, and went right to sleep. I woke up to two nurses holding me down, telling me to calm down because I had just come out of surgery. I'm not sure what I was doing, but I went back to sleep and woke up later in my room.

I did not react well to the anesthesia and ended up having to spend the night. When the anesthesia wore off about 1 am I felt so great. I slept better than I had in weeks and was more than ready to go when they discharged me this morning. I don't have to be back to work until next Wednesday, and other than the getting in and out of bed, I feel great!