Feeling Great

Last week I worked from home and made myself take it easy. Well it paid off. I am feeling great this week, and started back to work on Monday. Tonight I was able to lift Anthony without any pain. I started exercising again on Monday, and it felt good. I am going to call the doctor tomorrow, because I have a stitch poking out of each incision I have. It appears to be the knot where the surgeon started the stitches. So I need to find out what I should do.

We are going camping this weekend, and I started packing tonight. There is a chance of rain each day, and the high is forecasted at 72 degrees, but I am sure we will still have a fun and relaxing weekend.

Anthony started walking last Wednesday. He is so proud of himself. He gets so excited, and tries to walk faster and then tumbles down, but he gets right back up. It will be his first time walking outside this weekend. I will have to put shoes on him, so we will see how that goes.

Tomorrow I take Chase to see his preschool classroom and meet his teachers. He is very excited, and so are we. I am sure it will be a good experience for him.

I Am On The Mend

Friday night we hit the road around 6pm and headed to Milwaukee. We were going to the Wisconsin State Fair on Saturday and then to my grandpa's 80th Birthday party on Sunday. We got to my mom's around midnight. We visited for a bit and then went to bed around 1am.

At 2am I was awakened by sharp shooting pains in my torso and I had to throw up. I was having another gallbladder attack. I had just had my worst one to date on Wednesday night. It lasted a little over 6 hours. Normally they last 2 hours and then I am fine. I was scheduled for surgery on the 24th of August at Mercy. I was just trying to hold out. As the night progressed the pain persisted as did the throwing up. I tried to drink some water, but it wouldn't stay down. It hurt too much to fall asleep. I was holding out for the magic hour of 8am, because I was thinking after 6 hours it will subside. Well, that came and went. At 9:30 I threw up bile. I had never done that before. I was in so much pain and totally exhuasted. Finally my mom said that Eric needed to take me to the ER.

We arrived at St. Luke's at 10:30am. They got me into a triage room right away, but it was over an hour before we saw a doctor. Finally at 11:45 they gave me morphine for the pain. After that I felt great. I said, okay we can go now. Well, the doctor wanted to have an ultrasound so they took me to have that done. Then around 2pm the doctor came to talk to me. He said that I had a gallbladder infection and the wall of my gallbladder was thickening. He said he was going to call a surgeon in.

The surgeon arrived an hour later and talked to me. He said he wasn't comfortable sending me back to Iowa to have surgery there, I really should have it now. He said there was a good chance he would actually have to cut me open, since my gallbladder was so inflamed. Of course, hearing this started me bawling. He said he would try his best to do it laproscopicly.

They wheeled me to pre-op around 3pm. I remember a very nice male nurse David talking to me and trying to make me laugh and then I don't remember a thing. I vaguely remember my surgeon telling me it was over and getting brought up to my room. Finally around 8 pm I was bit more coherent and found out that the doctor was able to remove my gallbladder laproscopicly. It took him almost 3 hours, so Eric assumed he had cut me open. I was so thankful he was able to do it. He also performed another test while in there. He shot dye into my bile ducts and discovered some stray gallstones. Which then meant on Sunday a gastroinstinal doctor would have to do another procedure.

I was suppose to have my Endoscopic Retrograde Cholangiopancreatography a.k.a. ERCP around 9:30am. However, they didn't come and get me until noon. The procedure requires laying on your stomach. I thought I was going to die. They had some round foam supports to put over my incisions, but it was far from comfortable. I wasn't put completely under, but I was asleep for the procedure. I remember at one point coughing and I could feel the tube in my mouth, but then I was back out. The doctor took the endoscope and inserted it down to my small intestine, where he could then find the opening of my bile duct and pancreatic duct. He then removed four gallstones.

Afterwards they had me on demerol for pain, which really helped. However, the demerol began affecting my oxygen intake. I should have been at 96% oxygen, and I was at 89%. So I was given breathing treatments, and encouraged to cough, which hurt like heck. Monday night they were concerned that fluid was building up in my lungs, so Tuesday morning they took me off demerol and I had started taking percoset orally. Well, I wasn't allowed to eat anything. I was drinking water and I had some jello. So the peroset caused me to become nauseous. So I opted to stop taking pain medicine Tuesday afternoon and just deal with the pain.

Monday morning I found out that my billirubin was 5.7 and one of my liver enzyemes was high, so they started giving me a drug for jaundice and said I wouldn't be able to leave until my numbers came down. Tuesday my billirubin was down to 3.9 and by Wednesday it was 1.1. So finally at 3:30pm on Wednesday the surgeon said I could be discharged.

They wanted me walking as much as possible, which was really hard. I was weak, light headed and in pain. But I forced myself to walk at least 2 times a day on Monday and Tuesday. When I woke up on Wednesday I actually had some strength back and the pain was less. I was able to shower and I finally got to eat lunch. Hospital food never tasted so good!

If this had to happen, I am thankful it happened here in Milwaukee. My family has been incredible. Saturday my best friend from high school, Sara came and got Chase and took him to the fair, and then they hung out at her house. My mom kept Anthony. Sunday they went to my grandpa's birthday party. Then on Monday my brother took Chase back to his house so Madi and him could spend some time together. Between my grandparents, my aunt Cheryl and mom, they had the rest of the week figured out for taking care of Anthony. Eric headed back to Des Moines Monday afternoon.

I have been resting all day today at my aunt's, while my mom had the boys at her house. Tomorrow my aunt will have the boys, and Sara is going to come over to visit as well. Saturday morning my mom is going to drive us to the quad cities and we will meet Eric there. I am just thankful to have this over with, and to know I will not have to experience that kind of pain again. If I am up for it, I can work from home next week.

Chillin' at the Beach

Anthony's One Year Old Picture

One Big Happy Family

Accomplishments

It is so cool to see our boys learn new things right before your eyes. In the last week Chase has learned to buckle his own seat belt, pump on a swing and has memorized our phone number. He was so proud of himself. Anthony has started to regularly stand without holding onto anything and then he took three steps on Wednesday and four steps on Thursday. However, then he gets lazy and falls down to his butt and starts crawling again.

Wedding Bells

Tuesday night Meagan and Jesse got engaged, we are very excited. They had spent the day at Red Rock and then went to Knoxville to Marion County Park. Three years ago they had carved their names on the covered bridge there. Their names were still there. It was shortly after that when Jesse popped the question. When he first asked Meagan, she didn't think he was serious. She said, "That doesn't count." She didn't think he had a ring. Well low and behold he took the ring out of his pocket and asked again, "Will you marry me?" She was really surprised and this time she said, "yes!"

They are planning a June wedding in Portland. They asked Chase to be the ring bearer and Meagan asked Eric to walk her down the aisle. We are very excited to have a chance to go to the west coast. Meagan says Portland is beautiful in June.

Meagan and Jesse Visit

I'm sorry I have been remiss in keeping my blog up. We had Meagan and Jesse with us for the last week. They headed down to Missouri Friday afternoon for Jesse's family reunion. Meagan and Jesse flew into Kansas City on the 27th and then drove up to Iowa on the 28th of July. Chase was very excited to see his Aunt Meagan. He hadn't seen Jesse since he was 14 months, but it didn't take long for him to start talking and playing with him. The new Spiderman bop bag, probably didn't hurt any!

On Saturday Meagan went with me to have Tony's pictures taken. We went to Portrait Innovation, so I could have the pictures in 20 minutes. Tony didn't seem to like the photographer, but we still managed to get some pictures of him smiling. Part of the reason for Meagan and Jesse coming back, was for a wedding of a long time friend of Miranda and Meagan. Miranda was a bridesmaid and Meagan was her personal attendant. They went to the wedding Saturday afternoon.

Sunday we had a bbq, and the whole gang came over to see Meagan and Jesse. I grilled chicken breasts, hot dogs and veggies. After dinner twelve of us decided to play an old fashioned game of domino's. We had a great time. Jesse came out victorious. Rob and Stephanie were our comedic entertainment for the night. I woke up Monday, and my stomach hurt from laughing so much. They need to think about taking their act on the road. They play off of each other really well, and the more beer we had, the funnier it was. Miranda and Rob were staying the night, Eric was on vacation and Stephanie had Chris drive them home, so by 10:30pm I had to get to bed. I was the only one at our house that had to get in the am to work!

Chase got to stay home on Monday, so he could spend the day with Aunt Meagan and Uncle Jesse. They took him to see "Cars." He really liked it, and informed me we have to get the movie when it comes out. On Wednesday they took him to the Science Center. We had only been to the IMAX, so he really enjoyed it. He built a house and tore it down, he got to play with vacuum tubes and make funny faces. The highlight was a wooden snake they bought him. Then on Thursday Meagan and Jesse had both boys for the day. They went to the zoo and had a fun time. The boys were really good for them, which I was happy to hear.