Cholecystectomy

So about a month ago I had a stomach ache one night. I joked with David that I was dying... but then it got progressively worse to the point that I was clutched over on my hands and knees trying to breath. It felt like labor and I kept trying to convince David that I was not being over dramatic; that I did the whole labor thing without drugs and I was certainly not a wuss. Well, when an hour later I was still having trouble breathing and I wasn't getting any better, David knocked on our neighbors' door so he could stay at our place while we went to the hospital. While we were at the ER the nurse told me I wasn't dying and that I was going to have to wait for a room. Thank you downtown ghetto Dallas - I realized then that the ER serves more as a homeless shelter than it does as an actual hospital. After about 45 minutes of waiting my stomach felt a little better and I decided we certainly could not afford any more hospital bills so we headed home. About 30 minutes after that I started throwing up my dinner (sorry to gross you all out) so I chalked it up to a bad case of food poisoning. I then told all my friends the story, THOROUGHLY embarassed that I had gone to the ER for food posioning. Fast forward to a week later in Disneyland. Of course I ate everything fried ever made those 2 days... and had another run in with this same type of food poisoning that seemed to last 4 freaking hours! I told my mom in the morning what had happened and she knew right away that it was my gallbladder.
After one more attack on vacation I finally get home and see a doctor - they do a sonogram and sure enough they find 10-12 GALL STONES which apparently is an enormous amount. Go big or go home is what I say! So while waiting to get in to see a surgeon I looked up everything I could about gallbladders and have decided I'm having these attacks because I'm either 1. secretly a 40 year old woman or 2. severely overweight. After meeting with my great German surgeon he hears that I have had 3 attacks and feels awful (apparently he's heard how bad they are) and informs me I am not 40 or severely over weight but that it's Ashton's fault! YAHOO! You can imagine my delight to be able to blame this on something other than my love for food! He said sometimes when gallbladder disease runs in families and when you're pregnant, the crazy pregnancy hormones can cause the bile in your gallbladder to crystalize and become gallstones. I was also informed that if you go to the ER with a gallbladder attack they'll do an emergency surgery and take it out right then or hop you up on morphine to get you through the rest of the attack. What did the nurse do for me?? A whole lot of nada!!!
Anyway, so after hearing all this news we scheduled a surgery for yesterday. This is pretty much what they did to me - even though I don't have a man's body!

It was oh so much fun to "go under" and to be in an operating room. And the recovery hasn't been terrible at all.
Moral of the story - if I EVER have to go through pain like that again (now that I'm gallbladderless) I'd better be 9 months pregnant and about to push!
Did you learn everything you wanted to know about gallbladders and more in this post?