Ok, so last night I talked with K. more about what is going on and was able to finally piece together exactly what the situation is.

She HAS gall stones. There is no doubt about that whatsoever. This was confirmed by not only the ER staff, but by the person who ran the test on her gall bladder and the surgeon. The test in question is a 45 minute test, the first 30 minutes of which they measure the size of the gall bladder when it is empty and when it is full. In the last 15 minutes they gave her an injection that essentially replicates what happens when you introduce a high level of fatty foods to your system, causing the gall bladder to evacuate (for those who don’t know, the gall bladder produces bile that helps break down fatty foods).

K.’s gall bladder still evacuates, so it is essentially still working – This is why they didn’t want to remove the gall bladder.

I suppose the logic is that you wait for it to stop functioning altogether, as from what I’ve seen they can’t do anything to actually get rid of the stones.

So she will likely be given some diet restrictions on the level of drlovegroove when she goes to see her PCP today, and perhaps some kind of pain medication.

None of this changes the fact that –

• Her PCP never once spoke with her, or came to see her.
• She was sent home while she was still unable to eat without going through severe discomfort.
• She was given no kind of medication to help with the pain, and was instead given an antacid.
• She was told by one doctor that she HAD to have her gall bladder out, or that complications later down the line could lead to possible death. While I don’t fault the doctor for his being frank, having him tell us that then having the other doctors tell us to go home because everything is fine is confusing and not comforting.
• The doctor assigned to her in the hospital yelled at her for not listening, then denied doing so in front of the other hospital staff.

Had it not been for the nurses and “regular” staff her experience at St. Petersburg General would have been an utter and complete nightmare. As it was, it was still pretty shitty – and this is supposed to be one of the nicer hospitals in the area.

Addtional Update – K. just got off the phone with a nurse at her PCP’s office. What we suspected to be true was confirmed. The doctor that K. saw in the hospital called him, and told him that everything was fine. She did NOT tell him that she was still having pain from the attack, so he agreed with her that K. could be discharged. She completely understated K.’s symptoms, and the only reason we can see she did so is because K. told the doctor not to yell at her.

Nice, huh?

They finally got K. on some pain medication again, as the surgery is likely to be sometime tomorrow. They are trying to determine if she can eat anything at the moment, but so far she hasn’t had any grub. I suppose the pain medication is taking a bit of the edge off of that, though.

Nothing really new to report. They gave K. something to agitate her gall bladder so they could run some tests, which brought the pain from last night back again. As of yet, they have not given her anything for that pain – Nor have they fed her. I suspect that has something to do with waiting for the results or some such, but that isn’t any comfort to her at the moment. Her neighbor is an old woman who, when I was there, was talking about her diarrhea on the phone and insists on listening to the television at incredibly loud levels. Typical stuff you’d expect, too. Home Shopping Network, true crime stories, and some sort of show on the food network – Which certainly isn’t helping the fact that K. is starving right about now.

She’s miserable, but I did manage to get the dial up internet connection through our service provider working, so she’s at least going to be able to reconnect to the internet and (hopefully) get her mind off of things for a while.

Still no word on when they are actually going to do the operation or when she’ll be home.

Thanks for all the kind words in the previous post. She will see them, and hopefully it will help ease her mind or make her feel a bit better.

Just got home from the ER. K. bolted out of here and drove herself there around 10:00 PM last night in excruciating pain. I didn’t even have a chance to put my shoes on before she was gone. I finally caught up with her at the hospital, where she was in so much pain she could hardly stand there to fill out the paperwork.

They finally got her on pain medications, and she calmed down a bit. After a series of tests, they determined that her gall bladder was “very sick” and was going to need to be removed. This will be happening in the next day or so.

She is very scared right now, as she has never had any kind of surgery. Once I find out if she is up for receiving calls I will post contact information. Until that time, keep her in your thoughts.

I’m going to go try to get some sleep now.

Tomorrow night (Saturday), Crazy Buffet in Tampa – 6:30 PM

They are adding gratuity on the check due to the size of the party, so bring cash if you can to make things less confusing.

Whee! Sushi sushi!

You wanted me to make the reservations for Saturday, right?