Growing golfballs and other life funnies

so, I have been gone for a while. I need to catch up.

3 weeks ago I started having pain. bad pain. thought it was a "woman's issue" and just kind of took the attitude of "grin and bare it"

5 days later, I was calling my doctor to see if I should get checked. My family doctor couldn't see me so I called my OB. He got me in Friday morning. I was able to see my doctor who did a quick scan and saw multiple stones and told me to get to a surgeon. I made it home that day and made a few calls and nobody could see me until the middle of Feb. In the meantime, my pain increased and I called my doctor back, in tears, and was told go to the ER.

Upon arriving at the ER (4pm, Friday evening) they did some more blood work and
an U/S and gave me some good pain medication in my IV. Unfortunately, this pain
relief only lasted an hour and they had to give me more.

The ER doctor was not sure he could get a surgeon in that night as it was Friday night, after hours-and they still thought this was elective. He was wonderful though and called around and was able to get someone to come see me. After examining me and the blood results and u/s-they took me straight back to surgery. I had infection,multiple large stones and a gallbladder that was
shutting down.

I was actually admitted and stayed over 24 hours instead of the normal outpatient procedure. They had to make my incision larger to get the gallbladder out as it was so full of huge stones. They saved one for me--This is not even the largest one by far!



the largest stone was the size of a golf ball! and there were 15 stones inside!


Anyway, I got home and dh left 2 days later for a business trip so I was left to recover with 7 kids and that was hard! I am not a person that whines about leaving left home with my kids and no hubby, because they are MY kids! LOL, but this was definitely a challenge! Mostly because the pain pills made me sleep a lot-but I had 2 of the big kids home to help me out so we made it through!

So that is what I have been doing-growing stones the size that could house all of WHO-ville. Who would have thought? LOL