gallstones!

So, I was having a lot of stomach pain this week. It was a hard wrenching and burning pain in the right side of my abdomen and it hurt so much that i vomited a few times from it and i went to the bathroom lots but it didnt make the pain go away. So I went to a Same Day Care clinic at the Hutchinson Clinic here in town and Dr. Thode says 'sounds like gall bladder problems to me' and they hook me up to an IV and they draw blood and pump painkillers into me and put me to sleep and woke me up for an ultrasound and I fell asleep again and then they woke me up again and said I have gallstones! Medium-sized ones. Several of them.

I have three different medications now: Hydrocodone (vicodin), Levaquin (antibiotic), and Ursodiol, which dissolves gallstones, but it can take months for it to actually work. I think Dr. Thode is planning for me to have a surgery to have my gallbladder removed soon, because he only gave me 10 days worth of ursodiol. While I am thinking it would be nice to get my gallbladder removed, I dont think i want to have it done while I'm out here in Kansas. Of course, if the killer pain continues even with medication, I might have to. My mom had hers removed when she was 21 and my dad when he was 23, so I think it's partially a genetic thing to have gallstones in my family. Also, obesity and rapid weight loss help form gallstones because with both you have too much cholesterol in your bile.

I'm just going to take lots of pills and stay away from cholesterol and fats and hope that i get to feeling better long enough to get back to Illinois and have my gall bladder removed while I'm home.

That's what's new with Tom today. I was asleep just about all day and all night yesterday. I'm going to work today I think, probably an 11-8 kind of thing. I hope the vicodin I just took doesn't knock me out. Especially while I'm driving...

TB

PS: Here's a silly anecdote. After my dad's mom died in 1995 or 94 or one of those years, we had all of the stuff from her house in our garage. It sucked cuz we had usually parked cars in there, but for the time being, we had lots of furniture and boxes of granny stuff. One day, when we were going through the stuff, we found a little wooden box labeled 'Kathryn Barker - Gallstone" and sure as shoot, there was a dirty gallstone the size of a walnut sitting inside it.