Abbie's Real Life Blog

Oh, good lord, that was a week.  I am glad that week is over.  Ohhhhhver.

*Sigh.*

Tracy had been having some weird medical issues over the past couple of months, but they came to a head conveniently while I was out of town in Anaheim last weekend.  She didn’t go to the emergency room until things were reaching a boiling point, and I spent last Tuesday juggling my cell phone between the shuttle rides and the flight and the 120-mile trip home to Columbia from the airport.  By the time I got home, Tracy had not been admitted to the hospital but had an appointment with a surgeon scheduled for Wednesday at lunchtime.

She had acute pancreatitis and cholecystitis.  The acute pancreatitis was due to waiting too long to deal with the gallbladder.  She’s clearly stoic as all hell because she was probably passing stones over the past few weeks, and here we were thinking that it was perhaps ehrlichiosis (a tick-borne disease). 

Her mother flew into town on the first available flight on Wednesday and we all went to the surgeon appointment together.  Tracy was admitted to the hospital immediately and scheduled for surgery in the late afternoon on the same day.  She had to transfer to a second hospital for a follow-up procedure (an ERCP) on Thursday morning (due to such various factors as the emergency nature of the situation, the holiday weekend, and the lack of fellows and/or residents doing the procedure at the second hospital) but she walked out of the hospital and was asleep in her own bed by the middle of the afternoon, with a cat firmly snuggled against her arm.

She’s recovered pretty well over the past few days, with substantial improvement especially on Saturday.  With much convincing by many people (including her surgeon), she has mostly agreed to staying home from work this week, but she keeps wavering on that.  I don’t know why she wants to go back to work so quickly!  She’s on an ‘easy’ schedule this week, but that just means it’s a 40-hour week with no calls, instead of a 90-hour week with two 36-hour calls.  So it’s not really that easy, and she should just stay home.

Anyway, that was the THIRD gallbladder surgery undergone by someone in my immediate family in the past twelve months.  (!)  Tracy’s experience was weird because she switched hospitals for the procedure.  The two systems handled patients very differently, and that underscored my previous experiences because one of my family members had had the procedure at the first hospital and the other had had it at the second hospital and Tracy had both.  So I am well-versed on patient care at both establishments and am willing to divulge with any opportunity.  Not that my oversharing of information should surprise you.

Tracy’s mom stayed in town until yesterday, and we were sorry to see her leave as she’d been sweet enough to do some dishes and generally straighten up things around the house (mostly out of boredom, I think).  My grandmother and aunt are coming into town for several days and planning to tour our house on Wednesday night, so after Tracy’s mom left for the airport, I had to start cleaning the house big-time.  I got enormous amounts of laundry done, pictures hung up in the bedrooms and fresh bedding on both of the beds, and new slipcovers for the cat-destroyed living room couches.  I tried to buy fancy stretchy slipcovers on the internet, but they did not work out at all as they did not come even close to fitting our couches.  I ended up buying some cheap ones at Target, the kind with the bows on the ends (which look stupid, but they’re necessary parts of making the slipcovers fit the sofas).  They look a little country kitsch on what were modern sofas with clean lines, but I don’t hate them entirely.  They look clean and they hide all the destroyed fabric underneath.  They also seem to deter the cats from continuing to claw them up, so maybe a strategically-placed scratching post would be helpful too.

I am happy that everything went well, but it was a long tough week.  I’m glad it’s over.