There's a Hole in the Stomach, No Lies-Ah, No Lies-Ah

Just providing you with another little tune in your noggin. The Truth in Blogging Law requires me to reveal that there are actually FIVE holes in the stomach. Hick's stomach. He had surgery on Thursday, to remove his gallbladder.

Hick has been sickly for at least two months, getting the runaround from his nurse practitioner's office. Oh, they let him in (grudgingly) for an appointment, while making it clear that if he was sick, he shouldn't be there. Heh, heh. I guess they only want to treat well people right now. Like giving shots on the parking lot. Don't get me started.

Anyhoo... they ordered tests, and lost his blood sample without telling him for two weeks. Then took more blood. They did an ultrasound and didn't read it for a month or so. Then ordered another one. Hick had an EEG and a stress test and a lung x-ray. I'm pretty sure he's the unhealthiest six-million-dollar man ever.

FINALLY, after the second blood test, they notified Hick within a day to say that certain enzyme levels ruled out a heart attack (good thing, so he could quit waiting months to know if he'd had one), but pointed to a gallbladder issue. Which I'd told him all along, me being a VALedictorian, a fan of ER, but without the means to order and interpret tests.

It took another couple weeks to get Hick an appointment with a surgeon. Who agreed on the diagnosis, and asked why the two ultrasounds, since the first one showed the problem as well as the second. He set up a surgery date for Hick at a surgery center halfway to the city. Our local surgery center over in Bill-Paying Town would have been more convenient, but the earliest date was at the other one. They're about equidistant from Backroads, the difference being that I can DRIVE Hick to Bill-Paying Town on my back roads, but the other one requires highway driving, which freaks me out. I guess that's from the years I spent driving to the city to work at the unemployment office.

Anyhoo... Hick's pre-op information said he was required to bring a RESPONSIBLE ADULT to his 3-hour surgery. I asked The Pony if he thought he could be a RESPONSIBLE ADULT, and he replied,

"Well... technically, I AM an ADULT."

Close enough! The Pony drove Hick to his surgery. He had to be there at 9:30. Surgery was scheduled for 10:30. They planned to release him at 11:30 if everything went okay. In the meantime, the RESPONSIBLE ADULT was to remain IN THE CAR, ON THE PARKING LOT. So they could bring out paperwork for signing. And then bring out the recovering patient. Not a good fit for me, without bathroom facilities or air conditioning or heating or a comfy chair. 

Luckily, The Pony has a bladder like a reverse camel's hump, storing fluids rather than distributing them. AND he's pretty much impervious to heat or cold, and can entertain himself for hours on end with his new laptop. So off they went to surgery on Thursday morning.

The Pony updated me at 11:40 that Hick was out of surgery and in recovery, but they wanted him to drink some water before releasing him (perhaps to see if it squirted out any of the holes they put in him), and he was being stubborn, saying he didn't want any water. They went over all the discharge instructions with The Pony, who signed a RESPONSIBLE ADULT signature, agreeing that he was in charge of keeping Hick alive for the next 24 hours.

At 12:14, The Pony called to say that Hick had decided that he was in pain, so they were feeding him something so they could give him a pain pill for the ride home. It was probably the most expensive pain pill in the history of three-hour outpatient surgery, but allowed Hick to leave, and not live there the rest of his golden years, refusing to drink water.

Anyhoo... I had my gallbladder removed when The Pony was only a year old. I had three holes in my stomach for the surgery. Hick has FIVE! I cry shenanigans! Why did Hick get more holes than I did? How unfair is THAT?

Hick is recovering well. But of course you know there's more to this story...