A long and rambling account about my gallbladder surgery

Note: This is quite long and rambling with more detail than would interest most people. It’s mostly for my own recollections since I realise most of the details will fade from my memory in no time at all.

I’m still feeling pretty tired but I’m going to get started anyway before I forget too many details. Surgery had been scheduled for Tuesday with admission at 7am. For weeks it seemed the surgery was very far off. Then last week I had a series of phone calls to discuss my upcoming surgery. It started to feel a bit more real by this point. The first call was from the surgeon’s office to advise my admission had been changed from 7am to 11am. I was kind of pleased with this change since it meant I wouldn’t have to leave nearly as early to arrive on time.

Later, I had three separate interviews by phone:

• The admissions office-verifying details and insurance information. Also advising where I needed to go for admissions upon arrival. An “appointment” was made for the nurse to contact me on Saturday to discuss the medical side of things
• The anaesthetist- the usual discussion required before anaesthesia. He asked about any conditions I had and discussed medications I am taking. Somehow I forgot to mention that I have diabetes but didn’t realise this until a couple days later.  He advised my surgery would probably be around 2pm and told me I could eat a light breakfast before 7am.
• The nurse-She covered several details but mostly wanted to discuss my preparations for surgery and the hospital stay. She also suggested I arrive half an hour early as I had blood tests and a cardiogram before  surgery.  I found it interesting that she called me on a Saturday instead of a weekday.

I didn’t really start getting properly nervous until the night before surgery. My biggest worry was that it could turn into open surgery even though I had no reason to believe this was likely. I have been a bit concerned all along that surgery might trigger more autoimmune problems as happened after my wisdom teeth removal  several years ago but that’s not really something that could ever be predicted so I didn’t let that overshadow the need for surgery. Anyway, I was nervous enough the night before that I took a sleeping pill to make sure I got some rest overnight.

I woke up at 6am on Tuesday and immediately took my thyroid medicine so I could eat something before 7am. The Scientist had offered to make eggs and toast earlier but at that hour I can’t stomach savoury food all that well. Instead he prepared some toast and cereal for me. I’m very glad I was able to eat as I would be quite hungry by the time I got into surgery. I had quite a bit of time to kill before we left so I goofed off on the computer for a while before taking a shower. I was told not to wear any deodorants or lotions/creams/etc which was fine. I’ve been slack about using moisture lotion lately but since I couldn’t use it my skin felt incredibly dry that morning and I really was wanting to use it. We left a bit earlier than we needed as we needed to get fuel and I needed to buy some glue to fix the sole of one of my sandals that had recently come apart. I might manage to walk on it before surgery but didn’t want to risk it afterwards when I might be a bit unsteady on my feet.

We arrived at the hospital at 10:15 and went straight to the day of surgery admissions where we waited for about twenty minutes before I was seen. There was a big screen television set up there showing the rolling coverage of the flood situation in Queensland which was worsening. To be honest, it was kind of depressing stuff to see before you have surgery. I was apparently in the fortunate position of getting a private room for my stay. I guess it’s unsual for patients to get this request even if they have the appropriate insurance coverage. I was given a card with my room number and contact information which the Scientist kept since he would need it more than I would.  A short while later we were moved to another waiting area in the surgical wing and it was a short time before the nurse called me in to check my details again. This is something that I expected but you really start to feel much like a broken record when asked the same questions repeatedly.

Before I knew it I was moved to a bed where I would stay until I was taken for surgery. When the nurse had called me on Saturday, she indicated I’d have to be taken to have a cardiogram and blood tests before surgery in other parts of the hospital. However, both were done while I was in bed. Somebody came to the do the cardiogram almost immediately after I got there. Shortly afterwards,  the Scientist and  I said our goodbyes and he left to get to our car before it was ticketed for being parked longer than an hour. One of the nurses had me change into the hospital gown and hospital underwear, then get into bed. I also had to put on surgical stockings. Somebody came around to do my blood tests which took a while as he had to double check that all the details on my hospital bands and the vials matched. He was very friendly and even suggested that I make sure my arms were kept warm because that would make it easier for the anaesthetist.

After that I was pretty much on my own for the next several hours. There was an lcd tv set up so I flipped through the channels to find most of the regular stations were doing flood news. I did find a couple channels showing old sitcoms and some movie channels. There was no guide for the movie channels so it was completely chance that I eventually found the recent Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang showing. It was at least a third of the way through by the time I discovered it but it was more distracting than anything else and I stayed with it. By this point I was really anxious and just wanted to get on with things. 2pm rolled around and I was still there. Just before 3pm the anaesthetist came to see me and said that surgery would be about an hour later. And he was just about exactly right.

I was taken to the operating theater just before 4pm and moved onto the tiny slab where the surgery was to be performed. I had to put my arm onto a rest off to the left and the anaesthetist made his first attempt at inserting the iv. Then he made a second attempt before he opted to move onto the the gas while a nurse handled the iv. I’d been without water since 7am so I suspect I was rather dehydrated at his point which made it difficult to find a vein. When I’d had my wisdom teeth surgery, I’d been given cream to numb the area for the iv but the anaesthetist couldn’t find a vein and plunged a needle into my other hand with hardly any warning. It was extremely painful. Fortunately this time did not leave me in such pain. Someone else put some sleeves on over my stockinged calves.  I was asked to take several deep breaths and gradually became very fuzzy-headed before I was out.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the recovery area and feeling very out of it. I think I drifted in and out of sleep for a while before I felt pretty much awake, but tired. I couldn’t see anything because my glasses were removed after I’d lost consciousness. At some point a nurse asked if I was okay and all I could do is nod at that point. I lay there for what seemed like ages but was probably only half an hour before I was taken off to the ward. Again, I wasn’t able to see very well which was rather off-putting when you are zooming through the hospital on your back.

I got to my room to find the Scientist and Lego Lover waiting for me. Since my surgery had been scheduled for 2pm, they had planned to be there around 6pm, when I was likely to be settled in my room. It’s a good thing they hadn’t planned to come earlier or they’d have been waiting a while. The nurse did the first of many rounds of observations. Then she removed the face mask used for oxygen and replaced it was a nasal one. A machine was connected to those sleeves on my legs and they alternately would puff up, much like a blood pressure cuff. Then the air would release before it happened on the other leg. I’ve been told this is now standard practice for abdominal surgeries to prevent dvt occurring. I did find my voice at some point and vaguely recall chattering away about something to the Scientist. Lego Lover lurked in the background and avoided looking my way as much as possible. I didn’t realise until the next morning that there was blood all over my gown and he gets pretty squeamish about such things. Game Fanatic also wasn’t keen on seeing me in the hospital and avoided a visit altogether. I think they stayed for about an hour before taking off for home.

I was checked on quite regularly by a nurse for the first several hours and it was decided I would stay on oxygen through the night. I don’t remember being taken to the toilet but I wasn’t able to go and I ended up with a catheter. I had a tube from one of the wound sites for a drain and, of course, the iv. I was quite thoroughly hooked up on several parts of my body at this point. The nurse brought me some soup and gelatin to see how I’d go with some light food. I was ravenously hungry and eargerly looked forward to a bit of food. So I took a spoonful of soup and felt terribly ill. I waited quite a while before trying some of the gelatin and that made me equally ill. The nurse said not to try any more because vomiting would be very painful. Somehow, my  appetite didn’t seem to be so great at this point.

I spent most of the evening watching the tiny tv on the shelf. Unlike the lovely lcd in the pre-op area, this was a 13 inch box tv and the picture was not particularly great. Normally, our family watches a show called Letters and Numbers, a sort of game show,  at 6pm every evening on our SBS channel. The plan had been to watch this on the tv when I was back in the room. But the tv didn’t receive the SBS channel so we had to miss it. Surprisingly, it did received SBS2, a digital channel that has only been on air for a year or two at most. I can’t even recall what I watched on tv that night but it must not have held much interest. There was still a lot of news about the floods on some channels and the movie channels were still a mystery. Late in the evening, a nurse gave me the first of several heparin injections. I needed three a day while I was there.  Eventually I did try to sleep but that proved rather difficult. With all the tubes connected, I was limited to sleeping on my back, which is not one of my usual sleeping positions. I might have managed that part but the inflation of the sleeves on my calves would repeatedly jar me from sleep. I’d start to drift off and then the other side would start. The drip was also a problem because medicine would be put in and then it would start beeping loudly when finished. Of course a nurse never seemed to be around so I’d have to call one. This happened two or three times in short succession. There was also a maternity patient nearby and the baby spent a while crying in the night although I believe I might have overcome that had I been more comfortable. I think I  did eventually tire enough that I started to sleep through the distractions a bit more but it was never a long or deep sleep. It was almost a relief when morning came.

I gave up on sleep when the nurse came around to do more observations and give me medication as daylight was dawning. I turned on the tv to find out what time it was and watched more of the depressing flood news. The last time I spent any nights in the hospital was when Lego Lover was born but I don’t remember much of that. But I do remember spending five nights when my second pregnancy ended in a fetal demise because that was when Princess Diana had died and the tv was awash with her death and funeral. I suppose I will eventually be able to pinpoint the time I had this surgery to the worst of the Queensland floods in the future.

Not too long after I’d been taken to my room on Tuesday, it was determined that there was a problem with my bed. This wasn’t so much an issue the first night because I was happy to stay on my back much of the time. I did have to get help from the nurse so that I could sit up to try eating the first night. Without support, I wasn’t really able to sustain that for very long and when I was feeling ill, I just lay back down with as much ease as possible. The bed had been reported by the first nurse but nothing had been done during the night and I still had no way of moving the head of the bed so I could sit with support. So when a breakfast tray was brought in with milk and toast with jam, I found it rather hard to eat because and ended up taking a few tiny bites of the plain toast and leaving the rest. A man did come around to look at the bed and initially thought something was wrong with the controller. It eventuated that it was actually broken and would need to be replaced, something that probably should have been done the previous night anyway. One of the nurses  during the night had looked at the bed and could see straight away it was broken. I’m not quite sure what it was she noticed but it took the repair guy a lot longer and a lot more looking around under the bed to work this out. Anyway, when I went off to have my shower, the bed was taken away and a properly working one was put in its place.

Showering was quite an adventure. The nurse had removed the catheter and took me off the oxygen early in the morning. But I still had the drain along with the canula from the iv (which would be needed for antibiotics later). I found moving around quite awkward and it was impossible to bend down. I later found that I could squat down to reach the floor more easily than trying to bend. The squatting exercises I’d been doing the past several weeks had paid off. I had to get help from the nurse to dry off and get into clean clothes. The process was pretty tiring and I was glad to get back to bed for a while, especially now that I could move into a partly sitting position instead of being flat on my back. I was quite happy when I I was told the calves would no longer be encumbered by those sleeves. It seemed I was slowly getting rid of all the tubes.

I had a short visit by a surgeon (not mine) after breakfast was over and he indicated that I’d probably be in hospital for a couple more days. This surprised me because I’d been told anywhere from overnight to two days at most before. The surgeon said that as it was a private hospital they tried to keep patients in a bit longer so they are more recovered before they go home. His advice was backed up slightly when I received the menus for the next two days soon after his visit.

While I waited for lunch, I sat in a comfortable chair and worked on puzzles from one of several puzzle books I’d brought. Lunch arrived about 12:15pm and when I removed the cover from the plate I was amazed at the amount of food I’d been given. There was a very big piece of chicken with roasted potatoes and mixed vegetables on the plate. I also had a bowl of soup and an apple streudel for dessert. I was sure I’d leave half the food on my tray because while I was hungry, I wasn’t feeling ravenous as I had the night before. But I was completely wrong and finished off all but the chicken. My next thought was that eating that much food was going to cause big problems for my now gallbladder-less body. But I again was wrong and had no problems at all.

The Scientist visited mid-afternoon and just as he was about to leave, his brother and family stopped in for a visit. Lego Lover was totally put off coming back after seeing all the icky stuff the day before so I said I would call and talk to him later.  I spent the  rest of the afternoon sitting in the chair, reading, working puzzles and watching tv. I still had the drain attached so wasn’t totally mobile yet although I could move around the room so long as I carried the drain with me. When I’d gone for my shower in the morning, I’d managed to empty my bladder just a little bit. The nurse said I would be fine after that, and I figured it would be downhill from that point. But I had no more success that afternoon, despite several trips to the toilet. The nurse even sent me in for another shower to try to help things along but it was fruitless. So later that afternoon, I got to have another catheter put in. I stayed in bed for a while before asking for help putting everything on the other side of the bed so I could sit in the chair again, which was far more comfortable than the bed.

My other brother-in-law came a little while before dinner was served. He is extremely squeamish about hospitals, apparently, so I very much appreciate his efforts in visiting for as long as he did. I think I may have inadvertantly “grossed”  him out and he didn’t stay very long once my meal came. Dinner was a much smaller meal than lunch had been but I still had plenty to eat. I’d ordered a side salad and had a beef stroganoff with rice, which turned out to be not very flavorful. The food was fine otherwise and I had a fruit salad for dessert even though I was tempted by some other dessert.

I will point out  here that when I came out of surgery, and every time I was asked the first evening, my pain levels were pretty low. I think I said I was initially a 1 on a scale of 1-10 and later in the evening I might have moved to a 3 but that was as bad as it ever got. I was given Panadol (Tylenol) through the drip the first night and had tablets the next day. I was offered Tramadol several times but since the Panadol was working for me, I was happy to continue that way. I don’t recall when but I was heavily pushed to add in the Tramadol on Wednesday even though I didn’t need it. My friend who is a nurse told me they treat for pain and inflammation even when it’s not there as a preventative. So I took the Tramadol as requested and they continued to give me that, along with the Panadol until I was discharged.

I spent most of Wednesday evening watching tv from the chair but started to feel a bit drowsy so eventually moved back onto the bed and decided to try to get some sleep. Not long after I’d made this decision the shift changed and  a new nurse came on. She was very good but let me know that I had to have another iv treatment of antibiotics later on and she’d need to check my blood pressure at a particular time but she’d try to avoid too much disruption of my sleep. I did doze off and barely registered the blood pressure check. It was a couple hours later when the iv was started and that was kind of noisy so I woke up for that. But the nurse was very good about making sure she was there before the alarm started beeping and even didn’t take too long to come back when it was flushed afterwards. The next several hours I slept fairly well although I don’t know if I had much deep sleep as I was still on my back. I did try turning to the side a bit but the tube for the drain on the opposite side made it uncomfortable so I returned to my back.

When the nurse showed up for the first observations Thursday morning, I was feeling heaps better than the previous morning. Aside from taking medication, the first business of the day was the removal of the catheter. My drain and iv were also due to come out but the current nurse was at the end of her shift. Actually I had been told the previous afternoon that the drain was to be removed that day by the next shift’s nurse because the current one was due to leave (and she had only time to do the new catheter). But somehow that never happened through that shift or the following one.

Breakfast arrived and I was rather surprised to find my cereal but no milk to go with it. I can only assume that I had to request milk in addition to the cereal  but that wasn’t made clear on the menu. I’d ordered wheetbix which I was able to eat without milk but it was kind of dry so I didn’t finish it.  I couldn’t be bothered asking for milk to be brought and I made due with the toast, juice and yoghurt. I really don’t eat big breakfasts so early in the day so that worked out fine at the time.

The next shift nurse was the same one I’d had the previous evening and the only repeat while I was there. She removed the drain soon after breakfast and that was rather uncomfortable as she had to put in a stitch to close it off or something. It took a while and there was a fair bit of pinching with every movement. But then it was over and she put a waterproof dressing over it. The iv came out quite easily by comparison. I was finally free of all the contraptions!

The next order of business was getting my bladder to work properly so I went back and forth to the toilet several times. Then I took a shower, which was much easier without having all the attachments. I was feeling pretty well and even took time to wash my hair which made me feel a lot better. Afterwards I sat down in my favorite chair for a while until the nurse came along and told me I needed to go for a stroll. She gave me another dose of the Panadol and Tramadol and told me to go downstairs to the cafe or walk around the main floor for a while in hopes of getting my bladder working. I forgot to mention before that they have a really cool ultrasound machine that is specifically used for checking on how full the bladder is. This was used on me several times while I was there. I was kind of full at this point so the pressure was rather uncomfortable. Anyway,  I took the medication and found my way to the elevator. I was a bit disoriented at first because I’d not seen the outside of my room before now and didn’t know how to get downstairs at first. I followed signs for the exit, though, and found the elevators. It was quite busy downstairs, being late morning, so I just wandered around.  I didn’t have any money with me so there was no point in stopping at the cafe. I did find a courtyard after a bit of wandering so I went and sat down outside for awhile. My hair was still damp when I’d left my room so it was pretty short work to get it dry once I was outside. It felt like I might be able to go so I went back upstairs and tried again but had no success. I returned to the courtyard again and took along my puzzle book. I was sitting for about ten minutes or so when I suddenly felt like I was leaking so I got upstairs as soon as I could and nearly emptied my bladder but it took a long time. This was the last obstacle to me going home.

I didn’t mind being in the hospital the second night but I was pretty stir crazy by Thursday morning. And I had put on my own clothes after showering because I felt sure I’d be able to be home before the end of day. I just had to wait until the nurse got in touch with my surgeon to get the okay. She came back with the news I could go home at quarter to 12 so I called the Scientist to pick me up after lunch.  I was pretty hungry by this point so was happy to wait for lunch.

Around this time I began to feel really tired so I decided to get back into bed and watch tv until lunch arrived. When lunch arrived I was half dozing but I moved to the chair again and ate like I hadn’t eaten in days. I ate too fast and was still feeling hungry when I finished although I think there was plenty of food there. I had a vegetable patty with some sort of sauce, some vegetables, a side salad, a strawberry chiffon for dessert and apple juice to drink. When I finished eating I immediately hopped back into bed because I was absolutely exhausted. I had again dozed off a bit by the time the Scientist arrived to take me home. I’d already packed my belongings and had my discharge papers and post-op instructions so just needed to contact the nurse. She asked me if I wanted to take a wheelchair downstairs but I said I should be fine. As we walked down the corridor a short ways she asked again and I said no again but soon changed my mind. I had started to feel like I was going to black out so a wheelchair was brought and someone came to push me to the pick up area downstairs. I found by this point that my neck was struggling to support my head and it felt like it was ready to topple. The Scientist didn’t take long to bring the car around and I was soon sitting back in the seat to rest. The nurse had said that this might be a side effect of the tramadol although I hadn’t had this happen the day before when I’d taken it. Of course, I also hadn’t been up and around so much the previous day either. So when I got home I went straight to bed for a while although I don’t know that I slept at that point.

Since I’ve been home, I haven’t been affected by pain but I’ve been incredibly tired. I struggled that first day to stay awake long enough to watch the Letters and Numbers program that I’d been missing each day. I made it through another half hour then decided to go lie down and I pretty much stayed in bed the rest of the night, except to take medication.I woke up early and ended up going back to sleep a few times yesterday. Today has been similar although I’ve stayed mostly awake since early afternoon. The only real pain I will note is the unfortunate side effect of constipation that seems to accompany surgery. That has been worse than any pain from the wounds has been, funnily enough. I was given orders by the nurse to start taking lactulose and to continue on the pain medication for a few days even if I’m not feeling any pain. But I will probably stop taking the Tramadol tomorrow as it just seems to be overkill. I’m not completely convinced that it is the cause of my extreme drowsiness on discharge because I’d had the same feeling even when it’s been out of my system for hours. I think my body just wants me to take it easy and rest. And that concludes my rambling account of my gall bladder surgery.