Little Green Ghoul

See that green thing? That little, crappy, useless green thing? That's my gallbladder. And guess what? It's become such a pain in the a$$ that it's coming out on Friday. I know! I wasn't expecting that either.

About a month ago I ate some lasagna about 15 minutes before I went to bed (I know, not smart) and I had excruciating pain for about an hour and a half. I thought it was gas pains because my entire abdomen was hard as a rock. I mentioned this to a friend and she gleefully proclaimed it was my gallbladder. I say gleefully because she had just had hers out 2 weeks after giving birth to her daughter.

Last week I went to a friend's house and I ate a lot of garbage: some samosas, some pizza, some chocolate-dipped pretzels, etc. But I felt fine until a few hours later when I went to bed. I thought it was gas pains again but this time the pain was blinding. I couldn't sit, stand, or lie down and I cycled through each of those positions about every 5 seconds. My husband found me crawling in the hallway whimpering and yelping. Normally I try to be stoic about these things but when he asked me if I needed to go to the hospital I screamed, "YES!!!!!!!!!!" It was the longest ride of my life and I must have been frightening to anyone else in the ER because they took me right away. After a shot of dilaudid I stopped crying but they kept me until 4 am because they needed to wait for lab results. It was a long, rotten night.

I didn't mention anything here because I was way into denial that something was going to need to be done about it. The next day I had an ultrasound and gallstones were confirmed. Again, I just put it out of my mind. Today I had an appointment with a specialist and I figured he'd just put me on a bland diet and tell me to wait it out. That's not quite how it went.

He said it needed to come out. I said, fine, let's schedule it for November. He shook his head and said that I didn't understand. It needs to come out NOW. I said that's impossible, I'm training for a marathon, I can't take time off for surgery. And then he explained to me all the horrible things that could happen to me if I waited. He said he respected my dedication but if I had another attack like the one I had last week (which was inevitable, he said) I risked dislodging one of the stones and having it move to my bile duct. If that happened he said I'd not only miss the marathon, I'd be in extremely ill. His words: I wouldn't just be out of commission for the marathon, I'd be out of commission for a long, long time. He said he had a patient who has been in the hospital for a month because she's so ill and he still can't perform the cholecystectomy. I don't want that to be me.

I clearly was in shock and probably looked like I was on the verge of tears. He told me not to worry about the marathon. He said he's operated on plenty of other athletes (emphasis mine because this was the first time anyone ever mistook me for an athlete but I'll take it!) and was sure I'd be running within a week. He said to mentally prepare for pulling back for a week and he was sure I'd be back on track in a few weeks. That was reassuring. If this has to happen, I guess it's better that it be now with 11 weeks to go instead of the week before. Now I'm really glad I've stayed ahead of my training schedule because I'll need these next 2 weeks to work back up to where I was.

His resident told me that she's run NYC twice and she was really psyched for me that I was doing it. She told me not to worry about missing a week, she said that sometimes a forced taper week was a good thing. Since she's run it twice, I'm going to take her word for it.

This is NOT going to hold me back. This is merely an obstacle and I will get past this and it will make finishing the marathon even sweeter. Heck, I may even be a stronger runner because I'll be more streamlined without all those rocks bouncing around in my gallbladder. ;)