The joys of a wireless laptop have never been sweeter than the last two days. I said farewell to a rude and bad mannered gall bladder on Monday morning and have been serenely surfing wherever I please ever since. No wires, no plugging in, and now I am able to send orders to the printer and hey presto! there we are! things appear as if by magic! To add to all that Guanaco has given me simple instructions on how to transfer photos onto my blog so I shall soon be trying out that procedure.
Meanwhile, no visitor has yet requested an audience with my stones, which are floating revoltingly in a murky liquid the colour of eau de nil. I shall spare you all a photo of that sight! (On the other hand, maybe ........ ) My abdomen is looking healthy with four small dressings where camera and various other things were inserted during the eviction of these uninvited guests. Keyhole surgery is a wonderful thing. I can move, twist and bend even if a little cautiously. No drains, no excruciating pain, just a bit of discomfort...curiously mainly in my shoulders. That's apparently due to the CO2 they pump in in order to do the operation. But why the shoulders?
My cello is residing on his stand wondering where I am but I feel sure I shall be able to get going again very soon. Yesterday I printed some Pachelbel from www.virtualsheetmusic.com which I find a very good site to browse. I download the midi files as well which is a help when trying to learn things I have not heard before. Midi files, whilst not too great to listen to, I agree, can nevertheless be stretched and slowed down better than an orchestral piece can for practice purposes .
Thursday, 17 May 2007
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4 comments:
Oh, do post a picture of your stones. What's a blog for, if not to allow you to do that? Of course, this advice comes from someone who didn't think more than twice about posting a picture of kittie pooh, so take that under advisement.
I am delighted to hear that you have only minor discomfort after having your gallbladder removed. When I was a medical student, we dreaded assisting on cholecystectomies (love that word). A couple of hours, arm extended, holding "sticks" (retractors) while completely unable to see anything. Then a week or more taking care of a miserable patient with drains and post-op fevers and infections. By the time I left my general surgery rotations behind they had come up with a huge oval frame that held the retractors apart, which relieved the pain on the medical students' arms but still didn't allow them to see much. And the patient recovered the same. I am so glad that we both lived to experience the days of the "lap chole."
As for the shoulder pain, that is called referred pain, and we were taught that it is a kind of cross-talk between nerves along a shared pathway to the brain. It is at least partly due to irritation in the gallbladder bed, because you can prevent it by flooding the area with a -caine local anesthetic at the time of surgery. While you are sitting around recovering with a wireless laptop you might google "gall bladder shoulder pain etiology" and peruse some of the hits. There's even one for the Traditional Chinese Medicine explanation.
Glad you came through Ok. Here's hoping for a speedy recovery.
Thank you both for the kind comments, and the lesson in referred pain, ggtp. Think of the exhausting work with the retractors as muscle biulding for the day you started playing the cello. We need strong arms for bowing, fingering as well lugging the thing about! A picture of the offending stones may come, but first, my cello.....
Sorry about the typing errors above. I blame the anaesthetic!
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