So, lately…

Yeah, it’s been a little busy, what with the traveling and some drama here at home. I’ll try to get you all caught up in this brief posting.

I’ve been hanging out with/dating the Tardy Girl (ATG) for a little more than a year now. It’s a pretty casual thing for many reasons, mostly because she’s incredibly unavailable (she’s got 3 kids, financial issues, lots and lots of drama).

She just spent five weeks in the hospital after a blocked lower intestine required surgery. She got two infections post-surgery and they really did a crappy job of treating her in general. The blockage was likely caused by scar tissue from a previous surgery at the same hospital that they botched & then had to do an emergency hysterectomy. Nightmare, right?

So I’ve been going to the hospital to keep her company and try to cheer her up, cause that’s what I do. (I tried to bring a dopey gift most days – for example, I brought a flashlight that’s also a keychain and also a pink pig one day and a stress ball another day.) What else can you do for someone that’s in terrible pain and is super-depressed?

They finally released her this week, although her stomach is still really distended and is barely able to eat because of the pain (she was tiny to start with and now she’s skeletal). She’s staying at her parents house for now.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with her and her family as a result of all this. Her kids are ridiculously sweet (I’ve met two of them – the same two I had met before all this went down. The third is elusive.) and her parents are also really kind. Going through this seems to have changed our relationship (or whatever it is we have). It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out once she is (finally?) healthy again.

Oh, did I mention that she has no medical insurance? Nightmare. Ongoing…

And then I went to Orcas Island with a friend (let’s call her the Crunchy Girl) last weekend, which was great. It’s about a 1.5 hour drive up to the ferry, then a 1.5 hour ferry ride and a 45 minute drive to get to the place where we were staying. I was a little nervous and brought along a sleeping bag in case the cabin didn’t look clean enough, but it was clean and comfortable and perfect.

We hung out, did a little hiking, went to a nice little farmer’s market, hot tubbed and just generally got to know each other better. It was a really relaxing and wonderful time.

After I dropped the Crunchy Girl off at her house, I headed home. About a half mile from my house, I suddenly had such terrible stomach pain I had to pull over. I walked around, laid on the hood of my car and laid down in the car trying to wait for it to pass. I finally forced myself to drive home, hunched over the steering wheel, encouraging myself that I could make it.

When I got to my house, Gus the dog refused to even get up off the couch to greet me (sometimes he gets attitude when I go away – he was with friends & their dogs all weekend, playing like the little monster he is). I tried lying in different positions and the pain just kept getting worse. I finally realized that I needed to call 911. Oy with the drama.

At that point, the pain was so bad, I could barely speak to the 911 operator. She sent an ambulance to my house, which got there in about 5 minutes, which is pretty impressive, I guess. The ambulance guys came in the house and we sat on the couch while they checked me out & got some basic information. This was complicated by the fact that my attitude ridden dog decided to come sit on top of one of the ambulance guy’s laps. Ambulance guy didn’t find this endearing in the least. Which, under the circumstances, was pretty appropriate, although confusing to the beasty boy.

Ended up in the ER, where they made sure it wasn’t my heart (EKG – women display weird symptoms of heart attacks, so I was appreciative that they checked this out first), took x-rays, a CT scan, blood, urine, etc etc etc and diagnosed me with Gallstones.

Apparently, the large number of cashews I ate for lunch in the car ride home from the ferry contained a LOT of fat, which makes the gallbladder work. It compressed around the stones and caused the pain.

They treated the pain with painkillers and since I didn’t have an infection in my gallbladder said that I should follow up on it this week. I did, and have arranged to have said gallbladder removed the week after Thanksgiving.

So, that’s about it.

Oh, other than the fact that I’m attending a “Clitoral Revelations” class this afternoon. I’ll let you know all about that cause it’s bound to be entertaining.