Monday, February 26, 2007

Pictures for Grammy

Grammy has been on vacation for almost 2 WEEKS now and is missing the Sam-o-rama. So, here are some pictures to make her smile.






And here is one I found when I went to get the others off the camera. It's Sam and daddy, waiting for the nurse to come get Sam to have his tubes put in.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Excuses, excuses...

So…worst blogger in the world…I know.

BUT – I have a good excuse. Here’s what’s been going on:

On February 8, I developed major abdominal pain. I called the surgeon who operated on me in October to make sure that it wasn’t some kind of a complication from that surgery and, they thought it might be so they told me to come into the office. BUT – it’s a 1 ½ hour drive down there and by the time I would get there they would be closed. So they told me to go into the ER and have the on-call doc for their office paged.

Long story short: I was hospitalized with gallstones. I had a procedure called an ERCP to have two stones removed from my common bile duct – they were causing blockage and the pain and nausea. Basically, they knocked me out, put a scope down my throat and then used electrical current to cut a small hole in the bile duct to let the stones out. They also told me that I would need to have my gallbladder removed.

Flash forward to yesterday when I was taken back for surgery at 11 a.m. to have the gallbladder removed. It’s outpatient surgery, so I’m home again but I’ll be off for the next week recovering. Because I’m allergic to steri-strips, they GLUED me shut!

Also, I have a prescription for some pretty good pain killers which, surprisingly, I don’t need nearly as much for my abdomen as I do for my shoulders. According to Owen, they pumped me full of about 2 liters of CO2 for the laparoscopy. A lot of this gets absorbed into the body tissues and it takes a couple of days for it to work its way out. In the meantime, it migrates to the highest point in your body, which is fine when you’re lying down, but when you sit up, it travels into your shoulders and it very painful. And, wouldn’t you know it, sitting up is the best way to get rid of it. So you just have to kind of work through the pain with deep breaths, which also helps get rid of it.

So that’s my excuse/story. I could have gotten a note from the doctor excusing me, but you’re not the boss of me…

Sunday, February 18, 2007


This is a "vintage" photo taken of Sam at daycare.