SwiftVets.com

[kman]

I swear my wife can’t do ANYTHING the easy way. After a few miserable episodes with gall stones, she finally had her gall bladder removed a week ago Wednesday. Turns out it was packed with small stones. Everything went fine, and I took her home that afternoon. Well then, that should be the end of it right? But noooooooooooooooo, my Drama Queen had to milk it for all its worth.

Recovery was a piece of cake, and she only took one pain pill……Until Sunday night that is, when she began to have THE SAME EXACT PAIN as before. WTH???? The Gall Bladder is history, yet she's having ANOTHER attack. This episode had a sphincter factor of about 9 cause we were thinking, "WTH? the GBs gone". Anyways, we got through the episode and went back to sleep after a couple hours—and 2 Darvocet.

All was ok again till Tuesday evening when the Mother of All Gallstone Attacks hit. This one was worse than the attacks she had WITH the GB. Couldn’t tough it out on Darvoset, so we went to the ER. IV Toradol didn’t even take the edge off, so she got IV Dilaudin (the good stuff ), and I got to see the wife—who has NEVER taken ANY recreational drug—full-on stoned. I mean la-la land stoned. I was having a blast with her. "How ya feeling honey?" "I feel, um, ahhhhhhhhhh!" Her eyes were just slits, but she swears they were open.

God was it a relief to see her out of pain, but it scared the Shiite out of me to see her BP plummet to 83 over 41 and respirations go to like 8/min. Stoner then had an ultrasound that didn't show any stones (many can't be seen on ultrasound) but did show a bile duct that was dilated like it had just birthed a baby . She was released around 1AM after the event passed and a liter of IV fluid got her BP back up.

The likely culprit was a [leftover] stone in the common bile duct, and we scheduled an ERCP (bile duct roto rooter) for Friday. Of course she couldn’t wait that long as she had ANOTHER attack Wednesday evening. What a freeking Drama Queen! The timing of this one was suspicious, as I think she just wanted to get out of doing the dishes, moping the floor, vacuuming the house, cleaning out the fireplaces, mowing the lawns and washing both cars. In deference to her recent surgery, I wasn't really going to make her wash both cars--just my SUV . I do have a heart, you know .

This attack came on like gangbusters (she claimed), so we went straight to the ER of the hospital the ERCP was scheduled at. What a bad move that was as their ER was PACKED with illegal aliens and others clearly using the ER as a free primary care facility. I didn’t see a single person there who looked like they had a condition that would put them in an ER—just kids and babies (or kids WITH babies) with runny noses. They may not have had money for insurance, but they all sure had the coin to buy those cool color-screen flip phones they were showing each other. What a friggin bureaucratic hellhole that place was. My wife was bent over in pain, nearly losing consciousness, while they s-l-o-w-l-y called for one runny nose after another. After a half hour I checked and there were still a bazillion people ahead of us, and no amount of pleading would get her seen out of turn. We gave up and left. She was in so much pain, I nearly had to carry her to the car. Great, prolly the only INSURED (and emergent) customer there had to leave in disgust.

We went back to the original hospital (from the night before). They recognized us and had the narcotics flowing within 5 minutes of our arrival. After a powwow, the docs decided to admit her. She had the roto rooter Thursday, and sure nuff, there was a 5mm stone in there along with evidence she had “birthed” other stones recently. I took her home Thursday night. All is fine now………So far at least. Hopefully this is the end of it, but with the Drama Queen, you never know.

Wifeo had a good case of withdrawal DTs Friday—tremors and nausea mostly. Watch out for those narcotics. It only took a few doses of Dilaudin over 48 hours to cause this. I made a lesson of it for the kids (11 and 15) to show how easily it can be to get hooked on drugs. I think it hit home with them. It better have.

Oh, if you were one of the six people who prepped themselves (hours of diarrhea) for a Thursday colonoscopy only to have it canceled at the very last minute, blame it on the Drama Queen. I know you all were looking forward to having a three-foot tube put where the sun don't shine, and can't wait to evacuate yourselves with un-tolled hours of the runs again .


Kurt

PS Weird how the gallstones showed up in the gall bladder, but not in the common bile duct. I guess the lesson here is not to trust an ultrasound as being definitive at spotting gallstones.

PPS What's this got to do with Swifty stuff? Absofrigginlutely nothing. I'm stuck here watching the Drama Queen, so I thought I'd bore all of you with our saga.

[Barbie2004]

kman said:

[AMOS]

Had to have a tooth pulled and then he tried to give a prescription for Vicodin. No thanks. I couldn't believe it. Talk about getting hooked, That stuff is bad. Oxycontin, too, as well as others. What was he thinking?

As it turned out I had no pain at all.

[kman]

[GM Strong]

There are single guys here in PA, just seems like the women are looking for the rich ones which we aren't.
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8th Army Korea 68-69

[DLI78]

KaveMan,

If your wife is still passing stones it sounds to me like she isn't being a drama queen.

I can relate since my wife is a big-time hypochrondiac. She likes to watch those shows that tell you all the details about the Disease of the Day. "If you have tiny bubbles in your urine it means your liver is out of whack."

No, it means the champagne was really good. Whatever.

When your wife comes home from the hospital, make sure she shines those wheels. Nothing worse than a clean SUV with nasty looking wheels.
_________________
DLI 78
Army Linguist
1978-1986

[kimberly]