Gallstones

Yesterday I had an elective cholecystectomy. For those of you who have never heard of this it's the removal of my gallbladder and the gallstones in it.

When I was officially diagnosed with gallstones in August I wasn't surprised. I'd been getting little bits of pain since my pregnancy. Gallstones often developed then.

So off I went to see the surgeon and get booked in. And yesterday was it. I'm hard to cannulate, very small veins, but that was soon in and I was unconscious. Waking up was another story. OMG!

I woke up, mid nightmare, flat on my back with incredible lower abdominal pain. Struggling to breathe. I'm asthmatic and flat is not good. I think it was mostly a side effect of the aneasthetic. I don't panic often but I was starting to. I couldn't slow my breathing done and the wheezes were getting more widespread.

Luckily I managed to ask for ventolin
so they sat me up and gave me a nebuliser. And I woke up enough to calm down which helped.

The pain was incredible and they ended up having to give me a large amount of fentanyl. Fentanyl doesn't seem to work on me as well as it does on others.

Once I was up on the ward they gave me some endone which is helping. At the moment the pain is just a dull ache.

They also gave me my gallstones in a container. At first I admit I went into shock when I saw it. I've only just managed to count them, there are 34 of them. With the smallest being over half a centre meter in diameter. They are huge, some of the biggest I've ever seen. I can't believe I didn't have more pain.

(I do apologize for spelling errors and grammatical mistakes but as I type this it's 3am and I have some strong drugs on board.)