Gall falling
Okay, so the gall bladder adventure turned into much more of a saga than I expected. It was supposed to come out in a simple, laparascopic operation, but of course that would have been much too easy. I went in for that procedure, but between the time we'd scheduled the surgery and the actual surgery, apparently a stone had passed out of the gall bladder and lodged in my bile duct. They got the gall bladder out, but there was still a stone stuck in the bile duct. So, the next day, they did another procedure. This time it was an endoscopic procedure, where they pushed a camera down my throat, through the stomach to the small intestine and tried to grab the stone from there. Apparently that usually works, but in this case it didn't work either. So, the next day they went for the stone the other direction, by going through my side with a tube inserted through the liver into the bile duct, and tracted by real-time x-ray. The idea was that they could then insert a wire and poke it out. Of course, that didn't work either, so they left a tube in there to keep the bile duct open. That was supposed to stay for a week, and hopefully, the stone would go away on it's own, or they could poke it out after a week. After a day and a half of recovery in the hospital, they sent me home with a pile of pain drugs, which I apparently had a bad reaction to, so after a day of pain and vomiting, I was back in the hospital dealing with dehydration (and post-operative pains). During the next day and a half, we shuffled through several pain drugs, found one that worked, and they sent me home again for a few days.
So, Friday (now 10 days after my original, 'same-day' procedure), I went in to have the tube removed. Apparently, when they remove these tubes, they don't bother to sedate you (apparently it isn't as painful as putting them in - I was drugged the first time, so I can't tell, but it wasn't pleasant having the thing out). They pulled out one tube, put in another and injected some radio-opaque torture juice to see if the stone was gone. I howled a lot, and they said the stone was gone and showed me the x-ray movies of the torture juice going into my intestine, just the way it is supposed to. They stuck a bandage on the now empty hole and sent me home.
Well, about 45 min after being released, I began to have a bad reaction to the radio-opaque torture juice. Serious pain. Shaking, howling, vomiting, can't move or do anything type of reaction. A couple of unending hours after that, we had it under control again. Over the next couple of nights, I spiked a fever each night - apparently it is common to have a infection of the bile duct any time it is 'manipulated', so now I'm on some anti-biotics to deal with that.
The end result seems to be, that the gall bladder and all stones are out, and I'm finally on the mend. The insurance company I paid a couple hundred bucks to in case someone stole my luggage, has been great and seems to be covering the whole thing. Definitely a good value for me. And they've bought me a more direct ticket back to Darwin, so I may even be home again next week.
What an adventure.
So, Friday (now 10 days after my original, 'same-day' procedure), I went in to have the tube removed. Apparently, when they remove these tubes, they don't bother to sedate you (apparently it isn't as painful as putting them in - I was drugged the first time, so I can't tell, but it wasn't pleasant having the thing out). They pulled out one tube, put in another and injected some radio-opaque torture juice to see if the stone was gone. I howled a lot, and they said the stone was gone and showed me the x-ray movies of the torture juice going into my intestine, just the way it is supposed to. They stuck a bandage on the now empty hole and sent me home.
Well, about 45 min after being released, I began to have a bad reaction to the radio-opaque torture juice. Serious pain. Shaking, howling, vomiting, can't move or do anything type of reaction. A couple of unending hours after that, we had it under control again. Over the next couple of nights, I spiked a fever each night - apparently it is common to have a infection of the bile duct any time it is 'manipulated', so now I'm on some anti-biotics to deal with that.
The end result seems to be, that the gall bladder and all stones are out, and I'm finally on the mend. The insurance company I paid a couple hundred bucks to in case someone stole my luggage, has been great and seems to be covering the whole thing. Definitely a good value for me. And they've bought me a more direct ticket back to Darwin, so I may even be home again next week.
What an adventure.
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