Thanks for the good vibes. I'm finally out of hospital after 4 and a bit days in there. Found it very difficult to get in touch as my mobile decided it wouldn't phone or text out from the hospital
although I could receive incoming calls.
Apparently the op was horrendous and the surgeon said it should have taken only 20 minutes but actually took him 3 and half hours. He was not amused. The gallbladder was so packed with stones he couldn't get it out without cutting it open to get the stones out. Luckily he'd managed to do it all via keyhole surgery so my recovery has been pretty good although he was very worried about inflammation and bleeding in my liver and there was a chance my liver would be damaged because the condition had gone on much longer than it should have while I was misdiagnosed. The surgeon said that never in the whole history of his career had he dealt with such a difficult and dangerous gallbladder operation. He's given us a video tape of the op which we'll have to put onto a CD so we can watch it, but that will be later on. Don't think I'm quite up to watching blood and gore this soon after the op. I was also given a phial of some of the stones that were removed and was shocked how big they were. He says in his report that 2 big stones were blocking the bile duct, although both hubster and I were sure he'd originally said it was 4 stones.
The surgeon was impressed with the speed of my recovery but I guess that was mostly down to his having done a great job at the beginning. I've struggled for days with having to lug my 2 drainage bottles around with me whenever I did some walking or went to the bathroom. They were a big problem when I tried to get in and out of bed, but nevertheless, held together well. Until my last night, that is. I'd got up to the loo, went back to bed and turned over to sleep on my side. I felt a sort of 'pop' and felt sick as I knew something had gone wrong. My bile drain pipe had come apart and the bed and I were both soaked in bile. Two nurses came and remade the bed and gave me a clean gown. Back to bed and thankfully to sleep. Upon awakening and turning onto my back, I saw that my nice clean gown was, once again, soaked in bile. The tube had come out again. Another clean gown, but, luckily the bed wasn't too bad. Pity I had to cause such disruption on my last night there.
So, I came home this morning with a T shaped tube still in me and a coil of plastic tubing hanging outside. There's plasters all over my abdomen from the keyhole surgery (they use several entry points for a camera and tools etc,). George will have to change my dressings (you should have seen his colour change when he was being shown how to do it and also when I had my drainage tubes removed) and I'll go back on Sunday morning to be checked out, then 6 weeks later to have the T tube removed under local anaesthetic. I'm still a bit doddery on my feet and have a bit of pain when I move about, but I'm hoping to get stronger and more active with each day now.
I put on some pics so it's up to you if you want to see them. The sight of my flabby belly isn't for the faint-hearted. I knew I should have laid back a bit and ironed the creases out. The first one shows how the bile has soaked into the dressing. Lucky I was having the drains out today and could have clean dressings.