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Jun. 1, 2007
My wife was turning yellow, the sharp pain under her ribs failing to dissipate as it had done in three previous attacks over the past two years. We knew what the problem was. Her brother, sister, and mother no longer had gall bladders; the development of gall stones was an inherited trait. We went on the internet and studied the symptoms of gall stones, and they were exactly the same that she suffered from. Moreover, a recent PET scan done for a different ailment had discovered a dilated liver duct. After a severe bout of chills she told me to take her to the hospital--an option we'd decided on beforehand, if the attack didn't go away by itself.
We went to the emergency room--a kind of purgatory where the patient waits for the doctor's diagnosis. The three-walled rooms give partial privacy with a curtain in front, but they can't silence the noisy baby unhappy with the nurse and her needles, the policeman asking a family questions about a shooting victim, or the kid explaining how he broke his arm. The chief punishment in the emergency room is the IV machine alarm which beeps at the patient's slightest movement or sometimes for seemingly no reason. I quickly learned how the nurses silenced it. They press the second arrow, then the start button. I frequently silenced the alarm myself. The doctor ordered blood tests and a sonogram after learning her family history and symptoms. Four hours later, he confirmed that she did have gall stones and he turned her over to the surgeon which meant we had to stay in the hospital, a situation I'd dreaded for a while because I didn't particularly relish sleeping on the floor, but there was no way I was leaving my wife alone in her time of need. They rolled her bed up to a fifth floor room which was dark and forbidding because the blackness of the night seemed to penetrate the window like thoughts of death. The semi-private room was unoccupied, however, and I was glad there was a bed I could rest on. I didn't expect to be able to sleep in a strange place but it was better than the floor. Despite the IV machine which beeped mercilessly, the constant arrival of nurses checking vital signs, and the man in the neighboring room who moaned in pain, screamed in pain, and pressed the nurses button and yelled, "PAIN!"; I slept four hours. The pain medication had temporarily lowered by wife's pain level from what she described as a ten on a scale of one to ten to a six. Saturday, we waited until late afternoon before the surgeon finally came to see us, and I was relieved that Doctor's Hospital actually had a doctor that would see us because my wife was as yellow as an egg yolk, in constant pain only partially numbed by Percocet, nauseated, and running a temperature. The news was more overwhelming than expected. Her case was advanced; she would need two procedures. Her liver duct was completely blocked and removing her gall bladder in this scenario was too dangerous. Bacteria could infect her system thus causing a septicemia--a life threatening situation. First, a gastroenterologist would have to run a line down her esphogus and stomach and remove the stone that was blocking her liver duct. If this procedure was successful, the surgeon could perform a laparascopic cholecystectomy--the modern day method of removing a gall bladder--the following day. If it wasn't, the surgeon would be forced to open her up and perform a complicated operation. But they couldn't find an anesthesiologist on a Sunday, so we had to sweat out an extra day of worry. (To be continued) ------------ About the author Mark Gelbart: My book, Talk Radio, is a black comedy about a radio talk show host who gets kidnapped and psychologically tortured by a loser. http://www.authorsden.com/marksgelbart Email: agelbart@aol.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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