Beautiful Outside, Bizarre Inside
This has nothing to do with travel.
Favourite Dotter is beautiful on the outside but bizarre on the inside. And we have medical proof. In fact, her doctors wrote on her chart, "very bizarre anatomy."
She was taken to the hospital in the wee hours last week with serious pain and no idea what was wrong. Turns out she has gallstones and was having a gall bladder attack. Evidently this produces serious, unreleting pain which they alleviated with morphine.
Long story short, they kept her medicated with narcotic cocktails and reasonably comfortable until she could be taken in for surgery. Alas, it took nearly 36 hours before they could squeeze her in but the drugs helped. Normally, a gall bladder removal is quite routine. Tens of thousands are done every year in about 45 minutes and it's simple day surgery. You go home after. Unless, of course, you have a snakes' nest of ducts twisting and turning and appearing to be attached randomly to organs where they don't belong.
Dr. Mack prudently pulled out and closed her up.
"We need to see what we're dealing with here. She has very bizarre anatomy." The exploratory surgery seemed to indicate the gall bladder wasn't on the right side but more in the middle and almost on the left, with an extra duct connecting it to the liver. An aberrant duct. Shouldn't be there and it was causing the doctors some concern.
"If we make a mistake, this will ruin the rest of your life." Now there's a pronouncement you don't like to hear from a sober-faced doctor. "Cutting a bile duct will mean you need a liver transplant, and that will ruin your life." He repeated the 'ruining your life' bit 3 times just in case we hadn't been tense with attention the first two times.
One way to see clearly is an MRCP, which is simply a specific type of MRI. However, there's only one MRI available and, oddly, they don't run it 24/7. No no no. They close on weekends and don't run it after 6:00 p.m. weekdays. Lack of technicians they say. Too bad that just backs up the system. Nothing to do but wait, which we did and because she remained in hospital for pain control, she got in on Monday afternoon.
"The pictures look good, really nice and clear" the residents avowed as they traipsed into her room much later that day. "But the specialist has to take a look and decide how to proceed." When he looked, he really wanted more information and better pictures so he scheduled her for an ERCP Wednesday morning (now a full week since she was admitted.)
An ERCP sends a tiny little spy camera down your throat, stomach, and into the intestines to peek around and see, amongst other things, if the common bile duct is in fact emptying itself into the intestines to aid in digestion. And where all the other ductwork is leading. She does have two extra ducts, they determined, but they're okay because they're going into the intestine (that's good) and not into the gall bladder (that's bad). So, sometime Friday they're going in to remove the offensive bladder and with luck, she will be out by Sunday. Maybe even Saturday.
And that's great news.
Favourite Dotter is beautiful on the outside but bizarre on the inside. And we have medical proof. In fact, her doctors wrote on her chart, "very bizarre anatomy."
She was taken to the hospital in the wee hours last week with serious pain and no idea what was wrong. Turns out she has gallstones and was having a gall bladder attack. Evidently this produces serious, unreleting pain which they alleviated with morphine.
Long story short, they kept her medicated with narcotic cocktails and reasonably comfortable until she could be taken in for surgery. Alas, it took nearly 36 hours before they could squeeze her in but the drugs helped. Normally, a gall bladder removal is quite routine. Tens of thousands are done every year in about 45 minutes and it's simple day surgery. You go home after. Unless, of course, you have a snakes' nest of ducts twisting and turning and appearing to be attached randomly to organs where they don't belong.
Dr. Mack prudently pulled out and closed her up.
"We need to see what we're dealing with here. She has very bizarre anatomy." The exploratory surgery seemed to indicate the gall bladder wasn't on the right side but more in the middle and almost on the left, with an extra duct connecting it to the liver. An aberrant duct. Shouldn't be there and it was causing the doctors some concern.
"If we make a mistake, this will ruin the rest of your life." Now there's a pronouncement you don't like to hear from a sober-faced doctor. "Cutting a bile duct will mean you need a liver transplant, and that will ruin your life." He repeated the 'ruining your life' bit 3 times just in case we hadn't been tense with attention the first two times.
One way to see clearly is an MRCP, which is simply a specific type of MRI. However, there's only one MRI available and, oddly, they don't run it 24/7. No no no. They close on weekends and don't run it after 6:00 p.m. weekdays. Lack of technicians they say. Too bad that just backs up the system. Nothing to do but wait, which we did and because she remained in hospital for pain control, she got in on Monday afternoon.
"The pictures look good, really nice and clear" the residents avowed as they traipsed into her room much later that day. "But the specialist has to take a look and decide how to proceed." When he looked, he really wanted more information and better pictures so he scheduled her for an ERCP Wednesday morning (now a full week since she was admitted.)
An ERCP sends a tiny little spy camera down your throat, stomach, and into the intestines to peek around and see, amongst other things, if the common bile duct is in fact emptying itself into the intestines to aid in digestion. And where all the other ductwork is leading. She does have two extra ducts, they determined, but they're okay because they're going into the intestine (that's good) and not into the gall bladder (that's bad). So, sometime Friday they're going in to remove the offensive bladder and with luck, she will be out by Sunday. Maybe even Saturday.
And that's great news.
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