You may even have wondered where i was, or what happened to me.
Well, if my tablet could handle Northeast Georgia Medical Center's WiFi, i'd have told you.
It's like this:
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As i've mentioned, after a scary event involving blood coming out where blood should not, Dr Fogarty decided i should have a colonoscopy.
So, last Monday (7/14/14), i spent the day not-eating and the night and subsequent morning prepping for the fun of having someone poke a fibre-optic scope up my butt and scrutinise my insides.
Which they did, and discovered that i had some polyps (which they snipped off and sent for biopsy) and diverticulosis. Great.
So i went home, waited a while for everything to settle down, and had some mac and cheese in the late afternoon, stayed up most of the night playing on the various boards and such i frequent online, ate some pork chops (about 5AM) read for a while, and went to bed. (Now we're up to Wednesday morning, 7/15.)
Woke up about 11AM, did the usual morning things, noticed a slight soreness in the lower-right quadrant.
Kate came home from work about 3PM, not feeling well herself. I mentioned the soreness. I said "What if it's appendicitis?" she said "Have you got a fever?". I checked. No, i didn't. Probably something from the colonoscopy she said.
She called her mother, who's had more than one such procedure, and asked if she had had any residual pain. Her mother siad yes she had. We decided i'd check with Gainesville Gastroenterology the next day.
But the pain kept getting worse. I called Gainesville Gastro, got the on-call doctor (not the one who had done the procedure), who pulled up the records, and said that, as they had cauterised the polyp sites there was some chance of damage or possibly even perforation, and that i should probably go to Northeast Georgia Emergency Room, get some tests and imaging done, and have them contact him with the results. (It's 9PM Wednesday.)
So, Kate drives us to the Emergency Room. We fill out another bale of paperwork to complement the paperwork we did Tuesday, they give me one of those hospital gowns that are designed to check your resistance to death-by-embarrassment, and they wheeled me into the depths* of thehospital. A few hours pass, with some of the same questions being asked again (and again) by different people, blood drawn, pain meds being pumped into me, periodic blood-pressure checks, etc.
Eventually, (a bit past midnight - it's Thursday, 7/17 now) the doctor who caught my case came by, looked me over, prodded me some, listened to my lungs and heart (and my liver, for all i know) and said that he felt that the possible badnesses that Dr Kalarickal had outlined were quite possible indeed, so we were going to see what the CAT scan revealed.
So they gave me two pints of fake-orange-flavoured "contrast" fluid for the imaging.
After i'd drunk all that, about 1AM, they hauled me off to Imaging for the CAT scan.** The attendant pushing me was in a hurry. I had two thoughts as i watched the ceiling tiles whiz by:
1. This reminded me all too much of the hospital sequence in Jacob's Ladder***.
and
2. I have not suffered from motion sickness in the last thirty or forty years (that i can recall), but i was awfully close to it then.
I felt like i was being launched into the Time Tunnel. All it would have needed was blinking red and green LEDs mounted on the sensor ring that was visible as it spun around inside the arch. On the arch were two smiley-face/Pacman type symbols that lit up in sequence - one showed holding your breath, one showed breathing again.
Back to the ER area, and a bit past 2AM, the doctor came in and announced he'd never seen anyone with my kind of luck - Tuesday i had the colonoscopy, Wednesday i had appendicitis.****
About 3AM the surgeon came by - he couldn't stay long, since he had a patient on the table already, and had another scheduled after that, but we talked about what was going to happen.
I signed more consent forms - one for the surgery, and one to give me blood if necessary.
They wheeled me off to my room - North Tower, room 6722, an amazing trip through a maze of corridors******, very fast again, with Kate trotting along behind trying to keep up.
Kate went home to reassure Helen, wait until they told her i was in surgery before coming back (and to get my BIPAP and the charger for my tablet******).
Somewhat after 6AM it was chocks away and they rolled me into the surgery prep area, where i consulted (for the second time, forgot to mention the first time) with an anestheologist. And signed more consent forms.
And then they pumped the Good Stuff into my IV and it was lights out.
Somewhere around 11AM (remember, this is Thursday, 7/17), i woke up in the room.
I now had four incisions in my belly - three down low they had used to pump in the CO2 to inflate me and one at my belly button where he did the deed with the laparoscope.
{{That's it for now - i'll type more later}}
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*I just fought down the temptation to say "bowels".
** I resisted the temptation to ask where the cats were; the radioligist didn't look like he'd appreciate that joke, even if he hadn't heard it a few thousand times.
*** Not a good thing to be reminded of.
**** I did not resist the temptation to engage in a round of "I told you so" with Kate.
***** Which turned out to be superfluous.
****** The ER is in the South Tower.
My 
Best wishes for a swift and entirely uneventful recovery.