Like a Rolling Stone

A semi-brief update for the concerned internetters out there. My wife is feeling better, though still not home. She's in the hospital until at least tomorrow. But why start at the end? Let's flash back and revisit the past week.

First, the last post where I said the gallbladder was coming out, then the ducts would be cleaned out??...that was wrong. Turns out they needed to clean out her ducts before removing the gallbladder. So, Wednesday they tried to get the stones out of her ducts, but were unsuccessful. She was in that procedure for a long time, and it was all for nothing. So since they couldn't get in from the side they wanted, they needed a tube with a wire that was already inserted so that they could get the stones out.

But how would they get that wire in there? Well, on Thursday we found that the best way was for another doctor to take a long needle and go through her side, through her liver to find the duct that was above the stones. That took over 2 hours, and she was awake for the whole thing. They inserted a catheter into her side and she was very very very unhappy for about a day until the next try by the stone removal specialists.

On Friday they went at it again, this procedure (being done for the second time) was set into motion. This exciting adventure involves a camera on a long flexible tube being inserted down her throat and another little tool going in through her side to get a balloon above the stones. The balloon is inserted deflated and once above the blockage, is inflated and pulled down to move the stones down the duct and out. This time it was successful.

Saturday she was finally able to get her gallbladder removed, the one thing that we were expecting to happen back on Monday. She's feeling better from that now, though not even 80% yet. And since some of her liver tests aren't coming back quite great yet, they're keeping her there until they are sure she's ok.

I've spent the past two nights there at the hospital with her because she's so stiff and drugged. Just to help her out.

Throughout all this my parents have been watching our kids, and they've been doing pretty good. We took them to see her yesterday for the first time, T was find, E was a bit uncertain about the whole experience. But she warmed up to it after she discovered that she could raise and lower Mommy's hospital bed.

So hopefully she'll be able to come home tomorrow. We're really hoping for that. We could use some others hoping for that also.

In other news, I'm having the first T-ball practice on Wednesday...if it doesn't rain. That should be fun.