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Posts tagged ‘surgery’

On expectation and reality

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I made a confession yesterday that I’m now feeling less anxious about saying out loud: I may not be ready to run the Rock ‘n’ Roll Pasadena Half Marathon this weekend.

I’ve been thinking it for weeks. I only started really feeling it and wanting to be open about it 14 hours ago.

I told myself I needed at least three 10-milers to be OK with this training cycle. I’ve done two. The first one was a horrible struggle. Less than halfway through I felt like keeling over and just dying. Or at least disappearing into the ground.

Over the weekend, I told myself I’d do another. Then I went wine tasting and was having an amazing day with friends when my now gallbladderless body decided to rebel against me majorly for the first time since my surgery.

I had a margarita with dinner out at a restaurant. I ate barbecue chicken, coleslaw, corn and a bunch of other things. Within twenty minutes of eating, I found myself in the bathroom and (sorry, this may be TMI) throwing up everything I’d eaten during the day. My body wasn’t having it. I felt horrible.

I put off Sunday’s run for as long as I could, until Sunday was over.

I worked from home on Monday, straight through lunch and into the afternoon. At about 2:30 p.m. I decided it was time to put out or get out, for lack of a better term.

I started running. I didn’t stop for 10 miles.

It wasn’t a horrible run. I hit my training thresholds. I just felt completely unprepared after.

Why? Because my training runs haven’t really been “training” runs lately. I haven’t used Gu. I haven’t paid attention to hydration. In fact, my biggest concern has been my abdominal comfort and not overdoing it too soon. I never expected to have emergency surgery to remove my gallbladder last month. Doctors didn’t even know what it was, after years of tests and a previous surgery, so there was no way I could have prepared for any of this in my training cycle.

I look back now and realize I was living with a ton of pain. When I woke up in the hospital after my surgery, I hurt like hell where they put holes in me. But I also remember feeling something I hadn’t for awhile: no underlying abdomen pain. I guess the human body can withstand certain thresholds of discomfort and even make them normal. My pain was normal for me.

My expectation after the surgery was that I’d be up and running in a matter of weeks. The reality has been a lot harder.

My husband asked if I could switch to the 10K. I kindly told him there was no 10K option, which would likely have been far for doable for me in my current state.

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Instead, I’ll be venturing down to Pasadena to try my luck against a four-hour window in which I have every reason to fail. My running buddy actually assured me that I couldn’t do worse than her since she hasn’t run over four miles in forever. I, somehow, do not feel better about this whole thing.

The problem with signing up for races too far in advance is that most people don’t know what happens between the moment you hit “register” and the  moment you are at the start line.

In a perfect world, you would be fully trained by the time the gun goes off. Many people are not. Those who are may or may not have skipped or skimped one or more of their runs. There are cramps, torn ligaments, strains and sprains that set training back. There are unexpected events, whether personal or physical.

“Life is full of setbacks,” one of my old Lululemon bags I now use for my lunch has written on it. “Success is determined by how you handle those setbacks.”

I can’t help but think that Pasadena will be a critical point for my personal and athletic setbacks. My last race was weeks before I went back to work in December. This is my first race since I put all of that crap behind me. My husband tells me to just put one foot in front of the other.

“I’ve never seen you quit a race,” he said.

He’s right. Even at mile 18 in the pouring-down-rain 2012 version of the California International Marathon, I kept going. Even when my feet where waterlogged and my soaked shoes were tearing up my feet (my black toenails are the result of all that fun now), I kept going. But that now seems like forever ago, even though it was only December.

It seems like another Tara. In many ways, it is. She had a gallbladder, for one. She also never missed a training run despite a bevy of personal issues keeping her from being around people, even talking to people in some cases.

I’ll admit, I’m a little scared to see what the trip to Pasadena, the run and the aftermath has in store for this new Tara.

Making everyday recipes low fat

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I’m trying to really make better choices since my gallbladder removal, especially when it comes to consumption of many of my favorite foods. One that I love more than anything else? Cheese.

Cheese is always one of the things I told to consider cutting out completely.

The problem is that my husband can eat whatever he wants to. But I’m the one who cooks. So I have to make things for dinner that we both like.

As I was recuperating from surgery, I spent a lot of time on Pinterest. I don’t think I ever let my iPad go unless I was sleeping, which happened quite often as well. It was there I came across a recipe for a rolled chicken-bake like creation.

If you live near a Costco, you know the allure of a chicken bake. My husband loves them. I forgot to pin it, though, after I found it. So I tried to recreate it from memory, but with some low fat and fat free substitutes.

Ingredients

  • Two chicken breasts
  • 1 packet Hidden Valley Ranch dry mix
  • 1 cup low fat mozzarella cheese
  • 1 package fat free cream cheese
  • 1 cylinder pre-made pizza dough
  • Fat free cooking oil

Instructions

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1. Start by frying the chicken with a fat free cooking oil. Add 1/4 of the ranch mix for seasoning. Move the chicken off the stove, let cool down.

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2. Put the cream cheese and mozzarella into a bowl, mix in with 1/2 pack of the ranch dry mix. Set aside. Preheat oven at 400 degrees.

3. Open dough, spread out on a 13-by-9-inch pan in the shape of a rectangle.

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4. Mix the chicken into the cream cheese and mozzarella.

5. Spread the chicken mixture along the center of the dough.

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6. Roll the dough over the chicken mixture, making sure to pinch the ends so that the chicken mixture doesn’t come out.

7. Put roll in the oven for 20 minutes (this may change depending on the oven, my oven runs hot so it didn’t take 20 minutes).

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8. Let cool. Cut in slices and serve. The ends will likely be a little more bulked up, so you can either cut the loaf in half and split the two separate  pieces or cut in smaller slices, serving the two end pieces a little larger than the rest.

The verdict? My husband loved it. He’s planning on taking the rest of it to work tomorrow for lunch.

Plus, he didn’t really notice the difference in taste from regular to low fat.

I have a great recipe for homemade pizza crust that I have from a recipe book from one of our favorite wineries, I’m hoping to try it with as well. I think next time I won’t put so much of the dry ranch dressing into the cream cheese mixture (which is why I said only about 1/2 the packet), so that it doesn’t taste as “ranchy” as I thought it did.

I don’t know exact calories, but I know it doesn’t taste as dense as the Costco chicken bakes. In fact, it actually isn’t all that bad on my newly sensitive stomach.

This is going to be harder than I thought

I’ve run all of six miles since I got cleared to officially run. Six miles. And the first two were slow-as-molasses miles. I’m talking 12-minute mile zone. That’s usually my warm-up pace for the first half mile.

Yesterday, it was a nice comfort zone that took me two miles to break out of.

Let me explain.

Today, I was supposed to pumping out a record-fast 10K at the 2013 version of this race:

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Instead, I’m trying to find my balance again running, literally.

A week ago, after looking at my half marathon plans for Feb. 17 I realized most of my workouts were going to be treadmill activities. Not because I’m so in love with my treadmill I don’t want to leave the house. It’s because I’m still having some balance issues from the gallbladder removal surgery.

My surgeon said the issues will go away within a month. And while I could just say “oh well, no running for a month,” I can’t do that if I am really adamant about running Rock ‘n’ Roll Pasadena.

To be fair, anyone can walk/run a half without a ton of training. I want to do better than I did last year.

Basically if I get deep into a run, I start to feel as if my head is spinning. Then I wobble a little bit. Then my balance goes right out the window. It sounds really dangerous, yes. You’re thinking: “WHY THE HELL ARE YOU RUNNING?”

I sound naive, but it’s not as bad now as it was on Monday when I ran four miles. I’m hoping if I hit the treadmill today it would be as bad as it was yesterday. It will wear off, I was assured. So when I hopped on the treadmill for my six-mile run yesterday, I spent 24 minutes over two miles making sure I didn’t lose my balance.

I also ran later in the day.

Being without the dread of my full-time job means I can be creative again (not even kidding). It also means I can take on freelance assignments. I’m lucky enough to have a friend I greatly admire, who is sending some awesome coding/web building assignments my way. So I woke up at 7 a.m. Friday, put on my running clothes and then proceeding to alter alter CSS for five hours before deciding it was time to run. (My husband probably shouldn’t know that.) The good news is, the website I’m working on is starting to look like the mocks up. And I ran with only one short dizzy spell.

I WANT to be ready for Pasadena. I WANT to do better than last year. But right now I’m having some serious doubts in my capabilities to run a half. That gives me serious doubts in running the April 7 marathon too. (I hate even writing that because I’ve already paid for it, we already know we are going and I know I WANT to do that race too.)

Maybe this is still the post-operative fog talking. After a similar surgery in 2010, I only took a week off work. I ended up taking nearly six weeks off running. I don’t want to do that again. That was also a planned surgery. The gallbladder removal was an emergency. I can’t imagine what I’d be feeling, the back and forth thoughts and all, if it had happened closer to the Oakland Half Marathon, closer to the San Luis Obispo Marathon. I’d be devastated.

Right now? I’m mildly disappointed. I don’t think I’ve ever written a letter as sad for me as the one I did to the Brazen race director two weeks ago. I really just wanted to be there today. And not sitting at home wondering what might have been if my gallbladder had decided not to, for lack of better visual, explode on me.

Lessons in anatomy and physiology

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Do you know how hard it is to find a picture of a gallbladder on Wikimedia Commons? They are all ultrasound images. All kind of lame. I found a nice anatomy/physiology class look at the whole body, though, that seems to fit the purpose.

Let’s talk gallbladders.

There are three organs deemed “non existential” to the maintaining of life. We’ve all heard horror stories of people having their appendixes removed, usually with dramatic stories about it happening before high school graduation or grad night or, this one is real, I know someone who had her appendix removed a week before her wedding. She always says that’s the only reason she could fit into her dress.

Then there’s the spleen. The only people I know who have had theirs removed are people who have been in serious accidents.

Until last week, I wasn’t even aware my gallbladder could be what was causing me so many intestinal problems.

Now it makes sense.

Let’s backtrack.

The pain I’d been experiencing had been diagnosed as everything from “female troubles” to kidney stones to a “physical manifestation of stress.” I nearly kicked the doctor who diagnosed the latter of the three. Wow. If only stress could manifest as a removal appendage instead and we could just remove it from our lives.

In the last four months, as other craziness was going on in my life, it became considerably worse. I scaled back my food intake to get a little control over it. But I still had bowel issues (sorry, TMI, but necessary) and couldn’t drop a single pound on the scale. Something was up. Now that I look back at it, as my pain increased over the past couple years, the pounds stacked back on.

And I wasn’t eating bad. My husband joked that on paper, he is healthier than me. But what people don’t see is that I run 30-plus miles a week, eat healthy and take incredibly good care of myself. When I have pain, I know whether it’s expected or weird.

I’m still a little set back by the fact that my gallbladder was removed just a week ago.

But I’m learning to work within a new reality. Why? Because you can live without a gallbladder, but it does serve a vital body function.

The gallbladder holds bile. It rests under the liver. When we eat, it releases bile to the intestines to help with the moving of food and absorption. That’s why doctors introduce a liquid diet initially. Lots of Jello. Lots of broth. I’ve been gradually increasing my food intake.

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It started out with lots of soup. This is a homemade chicken bow-tie soup that I made the other night. My husband says that he’ll eat anything I put on the table, so this was the first of a series of challenges I’m putting him up to. It passed. All he added was pepper. I can’t handle a lot of salt and pepper.

The problem is that a week after surgery, I’m still lacking an appetite. I’m eating. But not much. And everything I am eating is as much as I was before. My husband and I talked about my diet last night, as we realized a couple things:

– I haven’t started taking any of the medication I was on prior to surgery (and I mean ALL medication outside of the pain meds)

– I’ve stopped drinking Diet Coke for the time being because I was told my stomach probably couldn’t handle the carbonation.

– I’ve prepared nearly every meal or had soup since leaving the hospital

– I haven’t ran all but a mile, and it was slightly disastrous and I nearly threw up doing it

Today, I weighed myself and I’m six pounds less than I did before surgery. I’m not sure if that’s because of surgery and a hospital stay, which usually happens. But my calorie consumption has gone down too.

I’ve been trying out new recipes that are low-fat or no fat based.

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I made a simple pizza, sans sauce. I used a French-bread crust, spread it out. I used low-fat mozzarella cheese, no fat cooking spray, sliced tomatoes and a little bit of basil. I also used some low-fat Parmesan cheese for taste. My husband loved it and it only took 20 minutes from prep to table.

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I have some leftovers I’m planning on warming up today, in the oven instead of the microwave. It will be nice to have a little crunch. I haven’t gone as far as figuring out the calories for something like this, but it treated my stomach well. I had a couple little slices (it’s not a big pizza).

And so far my stomach is handling things decently. I think over the next couple weeks it will be really a “try and see” thing. Because my gallbladder isn’t stockpiling bile, sometimes too much fat is released. Then I have some stomach cramps and other issues that may or may not involve me running to the bathroom.

Another new addition to my diet is soy-based products.

I bought Boca chicken burgers. which have been relatively easy on my stomach as well.

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Except I eat them as sandwiches, with low-fat cheese. And it tastes so good. This is one new food item my husband won’t be partaking in. I went to Berkeley for graduate school. I own Birkenstocks. He already tells me I’m a hippie. Eating anything Boca related doesn’t help, believe me.

So a week out, I’m relearning how to eat. I’m also dealing with very little appetite and other issues.

On a running note, I finally sent the email to the race director admitting I probably wouldn’t be able to run in the 10K next week. I figured I’d be feeling a lot better by now, but I’m still dozing off in the afternoon when my head starts to hurt. If I try to do too much, I end up having moments where I’m dizzy. If I want to drive, I can’t take my pain pills. So I’m kind of a mess still.

But my running buddy Sam scolded me for even thinking about running. She reminded me that we had a trip to Pasadena planned for next month. And it should likely now be my first race for 2013.

Getting through the post-operative fog

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The past couple days, when I try to take photos, they mostly look like the image above. Actually, a lot of things look like the image above.

I’ve been doing something fancy Google searching only to find out about all the post-operative side effects that come along with having general anesthesia.

Because this isn’t pain induced. I’m kind of past the pain today. Or at least I haven’t been taking my medications that leave me even more tired and loopy than I am right now. Though this morning was pretty epic when I congratulated myself for finally being able to wear real clothes (hello jeans! hello actual shirt!), then promptly fell asleep on my couch for what is like the umpteenth time.

So lame.

The good news is that I’ve been able to wear real clothes all day without pain.

The bad news is that I’m still suffering the side effects of being put under, much worse than the last time I had surgery in 2010.

I stand up and have dizzy spells. I can’t stay awake for more than four or five hours at a time. Then, for some reason, it takes me forever to fall asleep. Then I’m stuck in this great semi-somnia where I feel awake and can sense everything around me, but feel kind of paralyzed. Weird stuff is going on up in this body.

It may surprise then that when I woke up this morning I said “oh hey, maybe since I’m not in horrible pain anymore, I can actually run on the treadmill.” Then I stood up and realized the room was spinning. And my ears were doing this weird throbbing thing.

I’m pretty sure I’d be a disaster in my running shoes right now.

But I can’t help but feel a great need to get back to running as soon as possible. I haven’t even sent an email to the race director of the upcoming race because I keep thinking that maybe, just maybe, I can run the 10K. It will be alright, yes?

I’m probably so wrong.

I’m barely eating solid foods.

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But I’m taking down a lot of soup. My mother in law made the bowl above. She actually made enough for two, but I made my husband eat his fatty chicken strips from the night before. (That’s what he gets for eating in front of me. The chicken smelled so good I wanted to grab the strip right from his hand.)

Since I can’t drive until I am done with my pain pills, I asked him if he could take me to the store yesterday. I had to throw away most of what was in our pantry because it’s not exactly considering healthy or low fat by any means.

“We need food,” I said.

He gave me this look that bordered between sympathy and annoyance.

But he took me. Since I had a $10 off $50 coupon at Winco, he went there. Speaking of coupons, when I got to the register the clerk nearly freaked out when she saw I had about 10 other coupons to use.

She actually said “Oh Lord!” like I was one of those crazy coupon ladies who was going to get my grocery bill down to $1.50 or something like that. Yeah, we only saved $14.40.

We spent an hour in the store, picking up lots of fruits and vegetables (my snack staples). We also grabbed chicken and pork chops, to supplement the ground beef and stew meat we already have. We made a pact: no grocery shopping for two weeks. Instead, we need to eat everything in our pantry and refrigerator. The only thing I’d buy is fruits. Those seem to go pretty quickly.

My husband and I haven’t shopped together in a long time. The last time was probably before I started working two jobs. It was nice, if only because I’m not supposed to push the cart.

But the fog followed me to the store too, where the lights seemed to be screaming at me. I nearly fell over a couple times. If it hadn’t been for the shopping cart, I probably would have fallen in an aisle and had cans all over me.

Our mission to get low-fat and non-fat foods was a success, though.

We came home with a lot of good food and a meal plan.

So as much as I think I’m feeling better, I’m still realizing that this whole gallbladder episode was bigger than even I could imagine. I still have sterile-strips across the four holes in my abdomen. I’m supposed to wait until they “fall off” in the shower. I’m also supposed to call Monday and make a follow-up appointment with my surgeon to make sure everything is healing okay.

And yet, all I can think about is putting my Nikes back on and hitting the road.

My (somewhat) daily diet

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First thing: I’m very grateful for the thoughts, sentiments and such I’ve received through email. This hasn’t exactly been the easiest week of my life. And I think it’s awesome that people I don’t even know personally choose to reach out.

Second: I’ve been asked about what my diet is typically like on a day-to-day basis.

It’s a good question, especially considering that the gallstone my doctor found was incredibly huge.

So what does a typical, not splurging at Boudin day, look like for me? It’s pretty basic.

Breakfast

– Banana

– 100 calorie Grek yogurt

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Lunch

– Weight Watchers or Lean Cuisine meal

– Or a peanut butter sandwich on wheat bread

– Or a quick, small salad

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Snack options (Usually two or three during the day)

– Simply Fruit Rolls or sticks

– Granola bar

– Banana

– Golden Delicious apple

– Wheat thins

– Sugar Free Jello

– Another Greek yogurt

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Dinner

If I’m alone…

– Progresso Light Soup

– Sushi (Because my husband hates sushi, so if I’m alone this is the only time I can actually eat sushi)

– Weight Watchers or Lean Cuisine meal

If my husband is around…

– Chicken breast

– Side vegetable, usually corn, but sometimes zucchini

– Potatoes, pasta or some other starch

Doesn’t seem too bad, right?

My problem is overeating. If I make potatoes au gratin, I’m only really supposed to eat about a cup full. But, unfortunately, I have to eat more than that. I usually go back for seconds and thirds without hesitation.

Or when I eat chips, I grab more than the handful I am supposed to. I can’t seem to control it very well.

Is that what let to the gallstone and gallbladder issues? Maybe. Who knows. I’ve been dealing with these pains since a long time before I gained a ton of weight. The first time I can remember having this pain, I was in high school. At that point, I was only 135 pounds.

But my issue has always been the overeating. I eat a lot of good stuff.

In fact, when my husband brought me home from the hospital he started searching around for the things I could eat. He found sugar free Jello and the soup and a bunch of low-fat foods. He didn’t need to go buy much at all.

So if I had been eating this stuff all along, why has my stomach hurt so bad lately?

I don’t know. But I went back and looked at recent posts where I complained about abdomen issues while running, I can say that it was likely the result of the gallbladder issues getting really, really severe. Two emergency room visits in two weeks? Yes, that should tell me something.

But now my diet is definitely more exclusive than inclusive.

So I’m cutting back even more so. But my diet will likely stay very, very similar. Now, though, it’s much more important to stay within portion limits and not overdo the fat.

A new emergency, complete with surgery

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That whole post about bad luck? It just keeps getting worse.

The culmination of it all was an emergency surgery to remove my gallbladder (yes, the whole freaking thing) and a gallstone the size of a quarter from my body on Wednesday morning.

Let me go back to Jan. 1.

That emergency room trip where the CT scan showed nothing? Where blood tests were inconclusive?

I was sent home, that night, after being loaded up with painkillers. The good painkillers, not the ones that make me feel like I’m on fire (looking at you Morphine). I was also prescribed a bottle of Vicodin and some anti-nausea medication. Good thing too, because I had to keep taking it.

I can’t even begin to describe the pain I feel when it happens. It starts dull, then radiates throughout my abdomen. Then my stomach seems to get bloated. Last week, I couldn’t wear my jeans. It was that bad. And when all is said and done, it passes. Like nothing. It usually only lasts a night or so, then I’m back at it.

But this time, the pain stuck around. I noticed it when I was shooting a video on Thursday of last week. As I sat on the floor, something I usually do when shooting video. I all of the sudden had a sharp pain in my side. Then I felt a little sick. I was able to finish the video without any other incident.

On Saturday, it felt like it was kicking up again. By Monday, I was harboring a dull pain as I went throughout my day. I’ve been dealing with this since graduate school. Doctors first diagnosed me with an ulcer. That was a lucky guess … because I ended up having a pretty gnarly ulcer. My husband rushed me to the ER the year we got married after I could barely stand up. Then doctors said it was kidney stones. In 2010, I had surgery to look for “lady problems” that could be causing the pain.

Another doctor told me I needed to lose some weight. I proceeded forward with that. Thirty-pounds lighter, the pain came back.

And it kept coming, until Tuesday when, at another video assignment, it was full blown. Just crazy bad. Tuesday ended for me in a way that I should have predicted a few weeks ago when I decided to go back to work, except in the real-life version I was called self absorbed. (Not for this post.)

I came home upset Tuesday night. I took a Xanax to calm down. I fell asleep fast.

By midnight, I was wide awake trying to get the pain to pass again. I tried to go to the bathroom. I drank water, a ton of water. I used the heating pad. I took a shower. I did everything.

Then I started throwing up. Everything. Nothing stayed down. (Even that $10, super delicious Togo’s sandwich. Damn.)

So at 4 a.m., I woke my husband up by collapsing on our bedroom floor.

“I’m dying,” I cried.

“You’re not dying,” he said.

But he couldn’t deny I was in pain.

It took them an hour to get me painkillers. I hadn’t even had time, since the previous visit, to check in with my regular physician. This time, the emergency room doctor (a really young looking guy), ordered up a CT with contrast.

Less than 30 minutes later, he was back in my ER bay telling me by gallbladder looked inflamed. He brought in an ultrasound machine. He felt around. He said he wanted to consult the surgeon.

By 9 a.m. I was being wheeled into the surgery room to have my gallbladder removed.

I woke up in recovery, still dazed about all that had transpired in less than 12 hours.

And greeted by a clear liquid diet.

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Chicken broth. Jello. Yum. I also got juice. No carbonated beverages, though. Apparently, I may not be able to drink carbonated beverages for a while now.

Oh, and new holes all over my abdomen. I felt like a human pincushion.

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That’s what I look like after having a organ removed. And being put under general anesthesia. And being hooked up to a major massive IV delivering more painkillers.

So I’m sans gallbladder. My husband was right: I wasn’t dying.

But I’m not supposed to lift anything more than 15 pounds for the next month. I have an awesome sheet full of lots of fun doctor orders. No this. No that. No running. For at least two weeks.

So that 10K I was so jazzed about? Not happening, according to my husband. It’s only 16 days away. He wants me to contact the race company and transfer my entry to another event. I’ll get around to it, when I have a moment of clarity without the pain medication. (Like right now, when I’m not nearly as groggy as I thought I’d be.)

I’m trying not to be iffy about my half marathon in February, but you never know about these things. I’m in a lot of pain right now. I can barely stay awake for more than three hours, apparently a result of being put under.

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That was my view for the day/night. The night was ridiculous. There was no way I could get a good night’s rest. I had nurses coming in every two hours to check my vitals and make sure I was still alive. If they hadn’t have kept giving me pain medication, I probably wouldn’t have gone back to sleep.

One of the orderlys was really nice, though. She saw I was having trouble navigating something simple like opening up a sugar packet, for my tea, and she offered to make it for me.

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I nearly cried when she left. Lately I’ve been greeted with questioning looks and doubtful smiles. This woman was genuinely nice to me. She even opened up my napkin and put it on my lap. Why can’t more people be like that? (I may sound cheesy right now, but I’m had a hellish three weeks that has made me question nearly everything I knew about friendship and proper decorum.)

I kept getting zonked out with the IV painkillers.

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That little bag was both my friend and my enemy. They had to remove the original IV from my right hand and move it to my left late last night because the original one had saturated my arm. Every time my nurse “flushed” the line, it burned.

This morning, my husband came and bailed me out. We only live right down the street from the hospital, but the trip felt long. I really just wanted to go home and crawl into bed. When I finally did, I fell fast asleep.

I’m a little hunched over when I walk now. And the pain is still radiating, but this time I know it’s from the holes, not the gigantic gallstone.

I keep asking myself: Why is all this happening? What is it setting me up for?

One of my favorite songs says “it’s always darkest before the dawn.” I keep hoping that’s true. I keep thinking positively. It will all mean something, anything, eventually. But what matters right now, what I know matters, is that I am home, And safe. And my husband is taking care of me. And a friend who mattered came to see me. And my mom showed up without hesitation when she was called.

I know I’m loved, even if everything is falling apart all around me.