An update? No way.

Yeah, it’s been a while. I guess I just haven’t felt all that chatty. Still don’t, really.

So instead you get snippet updates.

Krys is still not 100%, and deals with varying levels of pain from her gall stones.

Thankgsiving was a smashing success, culminating in an hour or so of hanging out with an old friend of mine as we watched a DVD I have of the first two theatrical productions we ever did – back in Middle School.

Wasn’t cast in any of the upcoming shows in the 06-07 Jobsite season. Had a few days of mopey emo angst over it. Mostly over it now.

Our WoW guild seems to be growing exponentially. We now have over 70 individual accounts in the guild, and will be making another attempt at the final boss in Zul’Gurub tonight.

Alex turns 11 on Friday. I’m old.

I need to see a chiropractor, or I need to get a new chair at work. By the end of the day I’m in almost excruciating pain.

Still need new shoes.

Not looking forward to getting on the scale Thursday. I’m doing my best to be good for the rest of the week, but I suspect the lack of activity and general crappy eating I’ve done over the last two weeks will reflect poorly (and I was already up 2 pounds the last time I weighed in).

Blah.

Yes, Blah is very much the word for today. It’s grey outside the windows here, but the sun reflecting off the grey clouds is casting a light that meshes poorly with the glare of the flourescents. I feel like my eyes are bugging out of my head, my back hurts, and…yeah…just blah.

Ok…I’m out.

Jobsite 2006-2007 Season/Ensemble

The final casts lists for the upcoming Jobsite season are now posted and available for viewing here. There’s some great talent out there, folks, and it’s going to be one hell of a season. If you haven’t picked up any tickets yet, I highly suggest you do so as soon as possible. The Pillowman had a great run, and from what I understand the latest fund raising weekend had sold out crowds as well. Jobsite is on fire, and waiting until the last minute to get your tickets might not be much of an option this year.

As much as I enjoy actually being in the shows, it sadly didn’t work out that way this year. I still intend on seeing as many of them as I can. I was blown away by The Pillowman, and I’m totally jazzed to see how else they are going to woo me for the rest of the season.

The Diagnosis

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?

Update

K. is home, with her gall bladder intact. The doctor (who I wrote about before) and the surgeon have decided that it’s too soon to take out her gall bladder, and that she needs to follow up with her Primary Care Physician and see a G.I. In the meantime, they gave her a prescription for the equivalent of Prilosec OTC and sent her home.

Yeah, it’s the old “take two asprin and call me in the morning” routine.

I find it incredibly difficult to comprehend how the ER Doctor could be so utterly convinced that the gall bladder needed to be removed only to have the situation pretty much blown off by the doctors on her floor. K. tried to get in touch with her current PCP to talk to him about the situation, but he never called her back – He called the nurses station to yell at them, but he never spoke to K. once. The test they gave her on her gall bladder caused her a great amount of pain. The ultrasound showed what appeared to be stones in her gall bladder. Every time she eats she gets pain. I fail to see the fucking logic in sending her home.

But that’s what they did.

Right now she’s resting. I made her a few grilled cheese sandwiches, and while they caused her some discomfort they didn’t have her writhing on the floor again.

It’s hard to imagine why the situation played out the way it did – all I know is she’s still hurting, that she hurt worse than I’ve ever seen her hurt the other night, and they are basically giving her drugs that indicate it was gas.

Yeah.

Update

It was a rough evening. K. got into it with her doctor, who decided that it would be a good idea to yell at the patient who was in a great deal of pain and hadn’t had a cigarette or any caffeine in over 24 hours. Not. Smart. I managed to find a reasonable person to talk to once I got to the hospital and calmed the situation down, and I also got K.’s primary care physician information to her so that she could get Ms. Horrible Bedside Manner off her case. The situation was quite tense for a while there, though.

Fortunately, she’s medicated again and (hopefully) resting now. She should be meeting with the surgeon tomorrow to find out what her options are.

More Updates

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.

Update

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.