Spontaneous Surgery!

I think I jinxed myself the other day when I said I was SURE there'd be a ton of new adventures this year. Either self-jinxed or forgot to mention to the universe the type of adventure I was looking for.

Then again, GK Chesterton said "An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." Maybe that's the better way to look at the events from the past couple days.

The short version is: I had to have emergency surgery today.

Now, I don't want anyone goin' and gettin' all worried or anything. I'm right as rain now (even if a bit sore). I know I did concern a few people, however, so, in an effort to calm nerves, here's the long version.

Thursday evening, after dinner, I started having odd pain in my back and stomach. I've had pain like it before, and I was writing it off as another one of my "episodes" (we used to call these episodes gallbladder attacks...turns out we were quite incorrect on that one...oops).

Anyway, we decided to continue with our evening - I'd been asking Boy to take me to see Monsters, Inc in 3D, and I was NOT going to miss my chance. My discomfort level got worse over the course of the movie, but I stuck it out. It IS cute, friends, but if I had to make that decision again, I'd have probably chosen to go home.

Once I made it home, all I wanted to do was get in bed and sleep off the attack. It was about 10pm by the time I finally lay down. I got about two hours of sleep and woke up in horrible pain. The pain was right behind my belly button and was radiating to my back, adding additional discomfort and keeping me from being able to find an even slightly comfortable position.

Still thinking it was an attack, I decided to wait it out. I battled the pain for about 5 hours before I caved and called Mom, asking if I should go to the hospital. At first, we agreed I could wait a bit longer and hope it subsided, but about an hour later, hitting the 11th hour of the "attack," I simply couldn't bear it any longer.

I called my best friend and asked her to take me to the ER. I must have looked awful based on the way those sweet nurses looked at me. They got me in and back to a room pretty quickly where the most wonderful person ever (or at least she was at the time) gave me several does of anti-nausea meds and some pain controllers. I was FINALLY able to get some good sleep.

My mom, being 5.5 hours away, was, to say the least, a little concerned. She called my Tutu and had her drive down from Rogers to stay with me. I felt a lot better just having someone that loved me in the room.

As the morning wore on, the doctors decided to run a CT scan to see if they could figure out what was wrong. After the scan, my doc came in to inform me that I had a "bowel obstruction" - basically my small intestines got all twisted up on each other. Sometimes, when these tangles are minor, they sort themselves out (which is apparently what had happened with all those other episodes). This one, however, was so severe that they were going to have to do surgery to fix the tangle (as I was losing circulation in the tangled bits).

So, they admitted me to the hospital, found me a room, gave me one of those super flattering gowns to wear, and had me wait for a few hours til the surgeon was free.

I, in the meantime, began to panic about work. I felt bad enough missing ONE day, but the doctor indicated that I could be down for 2-3 weeks! Honestly, I was most upset about missing Monday. I have this HUGE kickoff planned for a new project - with posters and music and movie clips and snacks and the most adorable cupcakes. Ugh. Hate that I'm going to miss that. So, naturally, I had to make sure someone had that info. I was frantically emailing my boss the files when they came down to get me. Typical overachiever.

Then, as we got down to anesthesia, I realized I'd closed the computer before the files had finished transferring! Yes, THAT was the last thought I had before they put me under. Sometimes I wanna smack myself.

Anyway, the surgery went really well - my surgeon said it was a best case scenario - and I woke up without much pain or nausea. They got me back to my room and I was able to sleep for a little while (after making sure the files had fully transferred to work).

I'm now sitting in my room, surrounded by sweet flowers and a revolving set of loving friends and family members. I feel so very blessed to have people who love me this much. Mom and Dad are here from Memphis, Tutu sat with me all day, Boy refused to leave my side til I sent him home for a break (even his sweet momma came to see me), Kait came to see me and is watching Gigi for me, and I just had a visit from my pastor and his wife. On top of all that, the outpouring of love on Facebook has just been so very touching. I thank you all for your sweet words and prayers - they really mean a lot.

The recovery process won't be an easy one (a four inch incision through your abs can't just be covered by a bandaid...), but I'm sure with the support I have, I'll make it through in no time. I'll keep y'all updated. Thanks for checking in on me!

Til then, friends!