Surprise hospital adventure

Look!! I'm alive!!! Just got home from the hospital after twelve days, and apparently doing OK. The adventure isn't over yet, but we're in a lull at the moment. I left work quite abruptly last week Tuesday via ambulance because of severe chest pains. Turns out I have about a million gallstones, and one of them had decided to migrate to my pancreas and block it. This makes the pancreas eat itself, which as you can imagine is incredibly painful. From then until this afternoon, I've been in the hospital with varying medical implements attached to and/or inserted into me. You know how much it hurts when you get IV narcotics every two hours for eleven days and no one is worried about you getting addicted.

The plan now is to let everything inside me work on fixing itself with the help of good pain medicine and antibiotics, and then in six weeks or so I'll have another CAT scan to see what my pancreas is doing. At that time, either there will be surgery on my pancreas and they'll remove my gall bladder, or just the latter if the former doesn't need further help. According to my surgeon, I actually am in a very small percentile of people who recovered REALLY quickly from as bad as it was...he was telling me about a patient he had not much worse than me who checked in the day before Thanksgiving one year and didn't get out of the ICU until Valentine's Day. Apparently this could have resulted in my requiring a breathing tent and dialysis among other things had I not bounced back so quickly. And the hospital stay could have been months.

If it ain't one thing it's another, right? I shudder to think how much this is going to cost with no insurance. :***

 

Best wishes, Sgt. Tibbs :major

Bazza

 

Hope you continue to bounce back so well. Gallbladder surgery will be nothing after all of this.

 

Yikes. Crap. OMG.

More than anything else, it's just good to hear that you're alive and that you'll be getting better.

 

Thanks much, everyone! I was trying to get my laptop there, but mom kept putting me off. In retrospect that was probably best...I was NOTHING like coherent for at least the first eight days! roflmao

The way he explained it to me, my pancreas has to fix itself over the next few weeks before they can even consider doing any surgery. One of the things we're watching for is if the dead parts of it need to be surgically removed rather than going away on their own. Either way, my gallbladder has to come out, but they're waiting to do that surgery until they see if they need to go in for the pancreas. Officially what I have is pancreatitis aggravated by gallstones.

I still can't quite wrap my head around the fact that twelve days in the hospital getting Dilaudid through my IV every two hours the entire time is considered not only fast but impressive recovery! Although since I've been home I've been researching, and what could've happened is some pretty scary stuff, it just seems unbelievable to me that I could've been there for months. And I never even went to ICU...straight from the ER to a regular room!

I had to make myself a chart of what pills to take when tonight. :-o I'm taking ridiculous amounts of codeine (the main reason I was allowed to leave the hospital is two Tylenol 3 with codeine every four hours seems to control the pain almost as well as the Dilaudid was) and I'm a little dumb. :tired

 

Wishing you well and hoping your fast recovery is complete!

 

Yikes! Good and bad news, indeed. Glad that you are making a relatively speedy recovery. All the best wishes for the rest of the recovery and operations.

 

Damn Tibbs pretty scary stuff I wish you all the best.I hate hospital stays THE BOREDOM! :cry You think for the money you'll have to pay them they could make it more enjoyable.:-D At least you ain't feelin no pain!

Take care.

 

Tibbs, you must have been living right. Pancreatitis is horrible to have and also to get over. You are really lucky to have recovered so fast. I've seen folks die from it, or develop diabetes as an end result. My office manager had stomach stapling and got pancreatitis as a result...........nearly died. 4 months in hospital.
Good luck. Hope all continues to improve.

 

Great news Sarge that you bounced back so quickly.http://bestsmileys.com/bouncing/6.gif

Just take it easy now and let the body heal itself. http://bestsmileys.com/sleeping/9.gif

 

Mother of G-d....hope you start getting much better.

 

Woww !!! :eek

Speedy recovery Stg.Tibbs ! :grouphug

Shelagh

 

Glad to here you made it out in such a short time. My father had the same thing and was in for about a month and a half.
As far as the bill talk with the hospital admins about some sort of payment arrangements that you can handle. A shame your job doesn't supply insurance.
Wishing you well and good health.
Regards
BT