Gall Bladder Madness

If you must end up in the hospital...

Ok... there you go, I started it. I wasn't really sure how to start this one. See, you never want to end up in the hospital, at least noone I know does. I mean, maybe for a job, but not usually as a patient.

It's probably the part about, "you must be ill to stay here" type thing...

Or maybe it's the "we are going to poke you with lots of needles" type thing...

Or, it could be the "we may have to hurt you to make you better" type thing...

Or, it could be the "we are going to run lots of tests on you now, and they may turn something up, or.... not" type thing...

Of course, the hurting part probably goes with the needles part, not necessarily as much as stitches or broken bones, etc....

So... why would I be thinking about hospitals? Well, I got to spend the better part of my weekend in one. Not a fun experience. I mean, I could think of better ways to spend the weekend. Like, doing nothing, sitting on your but watching t.v., that would be non-productive, but still more fun with 5 fun little buggers running around like crazy than sitting in a hospital bed watching t.v. , while an IV drip slowly hydrates your body and provides all the nutrients in liquid form that you could want and a nurse comes in to take your blood pressure and temperature every 4 to 6 hours.

Basically, I had what appeared to be a gall bladder attack, however none of the proteins that would indicate it were showing up in my bloodstream. Then, as my bloodwork came back, they identified that I had very high liver enzymes, (and they were actually climbing while I was in the ER). The internals specialist decide to admit me and they took every picture under the sun they could of my gall bladder, liver, kidney's, etc. I had a ct-scan, x-rays, ultrasound and dye scan (radioactive juice so they could trace the workings of my internal organs.)

In the meantime they were keeping me on pain meds for all of this. Well, at the end, my liver enzymes (while still way too high) were starting to come down and they decided to release me.

Ahh, the joys of real food. My first taste of something good was a fresh whole grain bread loaf from Panera (provided by the kindly neighbors in my room) and a large glass of water provided by my kindly nurse. I am someone who drinks water voraciously, so that first glass after two days without any was awesome.

So, still in pain on Saturday afternoon and going home with orders to be in for lab work on Monday and take Advil for pain management I was off for home...

Oh, and to finish the if you must stay in the hospital part... I have to say, I highly recommend Crittenton Hospital in Rochester Hills, Michigan. The professionalism of the nurses seems like 2nd nature and is softened by their compassion and kindness to their patients. To have a nurse say you were a good patient and she doesn't want to see you leave, makes a person feel like a human being, when a lot of times hospitals make people feel like meat. That doesn't happen at Crittenton. From doctors who are specialists and surgeons, to nurses to lab technicians, nurses assistants and transporters, they make you feel like you are important. I watched them treat elderly people who could barely walk or move, with kindness and gentleness, taking a little extra time to make conversation and jokes and listen to them and make them feel important, when they could have just bustled off to business. But instead, I saw a true attitude of kindness that makes people feel like they are more than the next case, like going into Crittenton isn't just going to a medical oil change place, but stepping into a family who wants to get you better.

This isn't the first time I've seen that there. I've seen it in their treatment of my mother-in-law and my wife, when she was pregnant. (One of the many reasons all five of our children were born there.)

~ Happy Valentines Day ~

Happy Valentines Day!

In addition to valentines day, today was our anniversary too. I took a vacation day from work, to spend it with my wife and try to spoil her a bit. We've been married for fourteen years now. We had plans to go out in the morning and for lunch. Well, best laid plans of mice and men, since here in Michigan, we were pretty much hit by the North end of a nasty little blizzard that shut down most of the Midwest from Chicago to New York. There was also a wave of tiredness that we were both fighting from being up and down with small children in the middle of the night.


Speaking of 5 or 6 inches of snow, we have really cool neighbors too. Jim and his wife, a retired gentleman on our street came through and snowblowed ours and most of the neighbors driveways and walks. It was bitter cold out with windchills below zero and this man and his wife went through with his snowblower and dug a bunch of us out. His wife came behind and shoveled peoples porches and walk areas he couldn't get to with his snowblower. (We've been in this house 7 or 8 years now and have gone through two snowblowers. I talked to some friends about it this year and they said I need to look at something with more horsepower and chain driven, so it doesn't break down when I'm removing snow from mine and the neighbors home.) We did have some really pretty ice storms not too long and I got a couple shots...

My oldest son then had instructions to unbury our back driveway, garage door area and garbage cans. The quite funny part of it is that he decided this meant a one shovel wide area for walking in, not shoveling the back step or a path to any vehicles and not clearing enough space to get a mini-van out and leaning on the side fence, holding a shovel and chatting with the kid from next door. I guess that is shoveling snow in the mind of an 11 year old and we will have to work on a new definition during the next real snowfall.

Well, with all of that we finally got out for a late lunch of around 2pm. We went to National Coney Island (famous date and family dining place for us ~ it has something to do with food being good, kid friendly, hot and fast). We had a friendly waitress and thanked her with a Valentines Day tip. We then talked and drove around a bit, visiting Barnes and Nobles to pick out a book or two and get a cup of Starbucks coffee. We are quite hooked on a new one they have out now, Cinnamon Dolce' Latte, it's very good. I think she got it first and took me down with her. ;-)

Well, we picked up an absolutely hilarious book, Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings, by Tyler Perry. If you haven't seen any of Tyler Perry's work with Madea you really need to pick up the videos from Netflix or your local video store. His work is full of meaning, life lessons and dealing with reality, wrapped up in the tales of a spunk and spit filled Madea who pretty much butchers every "witticism" there is with hard hitting and humorous honesty. Just glancing through the book made us decide to pick up a copy for some friends of ours, (who actually introduced us to Tyler Perry and Madea.)

During our trip and time together, we talked about ourselves and our marriage. And I guess, for me, the real end thought that I came to was this.... I still love my wife very dearly, it may seem funny, that at 14 years, I can say that; but you know, we've had a lot of crazy things going on, but in spite of all that, it doesn't feel like 14 years, but more like a year or two. I have to say that I've been truly blessed with a precious gem of a woman. I've seen her gentle and giving spirit, her tender heart towards her mother and our children and others in our community.

I've watched her grow as a woman and a mother, and truly appreciate that in her. She is truly a beautiful woman, from the sparkle in her eyes when she's sassy, the tenderness and love I see in her when a child is in need or just wants attention, to the tears when her heart is broken or wounded. As an example, when I asked her what special thing she wanted to today, she responded that she wanted to take coffee and small gift to friends of ours, that evening. They weren't really able to go out for Valentines day, due to the wife having a broken leg. This mother of 5 split her Tibia from the top down and recently had surgery on it. So, after getting the kids to bed, that's what we did.

So, I have to say, there are people in my life that make me want to be a better person and my wife is one of them. It's very cool to be married to a woman that you just have fun being with. She is an honor to her husband, her children, in fact her whole family. She is who God created her to be and has a tender strength with just enough spitfire to make the world around her sparkle. She is truly a wonderful and beautiful woman. I love her as much, if not more than the day I married her.

Why I Moderate

I get asked why I have moderation turned on. It's not to make it hard to post, it's because I've had to deal with forum/blog trolls trying to post ad links in response to posts. It's silly, but it's what happens. So, I'm not interested in censoring your post, I'm censoring the people who are wasting blog posts and comments for their own advertising. If they want to sell ads, they need to get their own blog. :-P

Edit: 03-26-07 - Ok, so I'm going to try some of Google's new features and see if that takes care of the trollers... :-)