Unmitigated

Well, this has been kind of a bummer of a Thanksgiving week. I flew home to Georgia Sunday night, had a plate of fried chicken and potatoes waiting for me when I got home, finished Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind while I waited to get tired and fall asleep, and then started having dull pains in my back and stomach.

At first I thought it was just indigestion, and then I thought I’d just gotten too upset from the movie (I was crying like a mafia widow, as Rain would put it), and then around 6 AM I started to realize that something was seriously wrong. The pain kept getting worse and worse, until it was like the sharpest part of a cramp, but non-stop. And then I started throwing up, and instead of making everything better, it just made the pain worse each time. I’ve had attacks like this twice before, around five years ago and then five years before that, but they weren’t nearly as intense and always got better once I either threw up or just forced myself to go to sleep. There was no sleeping through this one.

I got Skip and Daddy to drive me to the doctor’s office, where they made me fill out a lot of forms, took a blood sample, wait what seemed like an eternity (but I was able to keep going to the bathroom and throwing up to pass the time), took some X-rays, gave me a shot of some anti-nausea drug (after which I threw up again), and told me that it was probably a gall bladder infection. The doctor prescribed some antibiotic and said that if it weren’t better in four or five hours I’d have to go to the Emergency Room, have some more tests run, and might have to have surgery.

Through the whole doctor’s visit I wasn’t able to even think straight because of the pain and lack of sleep, but whatever they shot me with and prescribed must’ve worked. I was almost asleep by the time I got home, my stomach settled down, and the pain pills they gave me are just awesome. They don’t make me high or anything, just completely pain free. I don’t think I’m ever completely pain free. It’s going to be tough to give those up. At any rate, apprently the doctor knows his medicines, because I haven’t had any more flare-ups, the pain has died down, and I made it through Thanksgiving dinner (but smaller portions) without incident. I’m just going to avoid the chili peppers for a good while, I think.

Other interesting things I learned from the whole incident: according to the scale at the office, I now weigh 171 pounds. Which means that over the last 8 months or so, I’ve lost about 35-40 pounds. I didn’t mean to do this; I’ve just had my mind on work and other things besides eating. The other bit is that gall bladder conditions are brought on by overdrinking (okay, I’m guilty of that) and stress (which if you ask me, leads to the former). So from that I conclude that my job is now literally killing me. I’m taking the whole thing as a sign that some changes are in order.