Just add ...

... well then.

I suppose I should start with my recent health whatsits and go from there.

Uhm. Last week-ish I went home early from work with a bad backache that I put down to lugging a box of paper upstairs for the printer.

Not so, and next day I was battling a gallstone attack. All I had in the way of pain relief was ibuprofen, which would work short-term, but then the pain would come back. Normally, for attacks, I had codiene, but of course, I'd run out.

So Wednesday was no fun, and then it was Thursday. Now, for me, gallstone pain was always a heavy kind of ache that felt like someone had placed a hefty weight just under my ribs, that they moved around for shits and giggles.

The pain I felt on Thursday morning, in my left side, was sharp. So, for me, not gallstone pain. Jeremy took me to A&E (ER) and that's where the fun really began.

After being poked for a bit by a lovely doctor, I had painkillers and blood tests, and a long-ish wait. I sent Jeremy and Patrick home - no point all of us sitting there looking at each other while I waited for the test results. (I'm skimming a bit because this is a ridiculously long story already - lol).

So I dozed and nurses brought me water, and the doctor poked more holes in my arms (she was lovely but insisted on doing her own bloodwork. Honestly, for that, give me a nurse any day) while I waited for the results.

Which were ... somewhat unexpected. I had pancreatitis. The doc had mentioned it as a possibility but it pretty much slipped out of my head until she very cheerfully told me that yes, I did have pancreatitis.

Oh.

What happened was that one of my teenie eenie gallstones (I have them in a specimen jar. They were WEE) had travelled down my bile duct towards the pancreas, thereby giving me pancreatitis.

What this meant was I had to be admitted. There's something in the blood (I think - please excuse my shaky anatomy - lol) called amylase. My amylase numbers were high, and they had to come down before the docs could do what they needed to get rid of the pancreatitis: take out my gallbladder.

The plan was for me to have the operation on the Monday. So there I was, stuck in the hospital from Thursday, so what's a girl to do?

Read a lot - lol. I read five books over the course of the time I was there:

Harry Potter 2 & 3
The Two Towers (yes, I finally finished it - lol)
Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief
Full Dark No Stars

I'm ... not going to write reviews for those. I have six or seven books I should review but it's really not going to happen. I'm a bit too far behind. So whatever book I finish next, I'm just going to pick up from there.

Anyway. Fast-forward to Monday. I was pretty grumpy by then, having been nil-by-mouth for several hours already. I was sort of slotted to have my surgery in the morning, but because of the list I was on, it was a case of when there was a space available. And the girl in the bed next to me had a burst appendix.

So.

Monday afternoon, it happened. And honestly, it felt like I blinked. The anaethetist gave me something to relax, then knocked me out and the next thing I knew I was waking up in recovery. Little dizzy, and spaced on morphine, but that was about as bad as it got. (Unlike the poor girl next to me who struggled with pain and vomiting before and after her surgery. I felt bad for her.)

Next day, the doc and his minions/lackeys came around, and I was declared fit to travel. Yes! Home!!!

And that's where I've been since - lol. I got a prescription for painkillers, but the pain seems to have largely disappeared (yay). So I've been trying to take it as easy as I can, which sometimes isn't that easy with a nearly four-year-old running around, but Jeremy's been helping as much as he can.

So. That's, uh, the saga I guess?

This is also a way of me starting to ... integrate? the blog a bit more. I want to post more than just book reviews and book-related things. But we'll see how that goes - lol.