Exactly One Year Ago Tonight....(warning... long post)

I thought I was having a heart attack - literally.....but, let's start at the beginning of the story, shall we?! Today was the day a year ago that our office had our annual Christmas Party and White Elephant Gift Exchange. Everything went according to plan and we all had a wonderful time and received some very nice gifts. After the party, I went home that night as usual and did my normal nightly chores; you know, the cooking and cleaning, etc., and getting ready for the next work day.  Mr. A and I went to bed about 9:30 that night and I was literally out asleep within minutes.  About 11:30, however, I was awoken with extreme chest pains and could not even breathe.  Ya'll, it really did feel like I had an elephant sitting on my chest.  The only difference was that my neck, nor my back, nor my arm was experiencing the "usual" heart attack symptoms.  I woke my husband up to help me and tell him what was going on.  He didn't feel like I was having a heart attack but we knew it was something more serious than bad heartburn (which I've had maybe once or twice in my entire life). He helped me get dressed and we got in the car to drive to the ER. Luckily, it was only a couple of miles from where we lived at the time. Once we reached the redlight just right outside of the hospital, I tried to convince Mr. A to take me back home, but he was having none of it.

We went inside and he got me registered at the front desk while I sat down.  Within minutes of being there, literally, I told him I felt sick and needed a vomit bag. He jumped up and grabbed one and gave to me and within seconds the vomiting began.  I literally vomited for hours and had nothing but the normal stomach acid coming up after a while (sorry for the gruesome thoughts in your head currently).  They wheeled me back to a room and tried to get an IV in my arm. However, my body had a mind of it's own and would not quit vomiting long enough for them to get the IV in.  After about another hour of this, they were finally able to get me to calm down enough for the IV.  Once all was calm and the finigren (sp?) began working, they wheeled me back to the x-ray room to take a look. Let me just tell you this - it is EXTREMELY hard to have an x-ray taken when you are in so much pain and it hurts to move.  They literally had to take the x-ray while I was in the wheelchair, because I just could not move.

After another couple of hours (you know how it goes when you are at the ER - you wait forever), they finally took me back to a normal room that just happened to have a big comfy oversized man's leather recliner and I sat down in that to wait for the doctor. It was nice to kick back in a comfy chair instead of sitting up in a darn wheelchair.  Within about 30 minutes or so, the dr. finally came to see me.  He had already read the x-rays and learned I had a bad gallbladder attack and we were heading into surgery. The doctor actually told me that my gallbladder was double the size it should be and it was a yellowish color.  He also said that if I hadn't came in when I did, that it could have ruptured on me any minute and that it was a good thing I hadn't waited any longer to go to the ER or convince Mr. A to take me back home like I wanted him to do.  I flipped the heck out ya'll.  I was terrified at the thought of surgery.  I've had several over the years, but they freak me out just as bad as needles do and so they had to give me a sedative to calm me down.  Yes, at 47 years old, I am still a HUGE baby when it comes to needles and surgeries.  Anywho.... after a few minutes of getting me calmed down, they took me to the regular hospital to get me admitted and into a room. The room they put us in was cold and the bed was very uncomfortable.  It was a "waiting" type of room, not a normal hospital room.  After a couple of hours, the surgeon appeared and told me we were doing surgery later that day. Mind you, we went to the hospital about 11:45 that night and this was already about 3 or 4 a.m. My poor husband was afraid to leave me so he ended up sleeping on the hard floor beside my bed while we waited. (I'm so lucky to have such a great husband and I'm SO thankful for him - he has definitely been there for me these entire 18+ years and is my rock)

A little while later they got us into a "real" hospital room and started preparing me for the surgery. Needless to say, when it comes to me having surgery, I am absolutely terrified every.single,time to the point that one time I even wrote goodbye letters to my husband, children, family and friends. I know, dramatic, much?!

Anyway, they got me wheeled into the "prep" room and the surgeon and anesthesiologist came to see me to get me ready and drugged up. Before the poor anesthesiologist could even give me the good stuff, I was bawling uncontrollably firmly believing that I was going to die that day.

I remember he kept looking at me and then my husband totally bewildered until my husband explained to him my fear.  He then nodded his head, like, oh, she's a crazy person and started shooting me up with the drugs as fast as he could administer them.  He had a look like this on his face - LOL

Thankfully, within minutes I was calmed down and feeling good and just ready to get it over with. A few hours later once I was out of recovery and back in my room, my handsome son came to visit me and brought his mommy a dozen red roses. Didn't I raise my boy right?! :) He's going to make a good hubby one day in the far off future.

I was in the hospital for a couple of days and then finally got to go home and thankfully, since hubby had to work, I had my son checking up on me and keeping me company a lot and playing nursemaid in between his college classes and working. See, I told you I raised him right.  :)

Anyway, I finally got to go back to work just a week later, which was really nice, since I had just started at my new job a couple of months prior to this attack. The bad thing about the surgery was at the time our insurance was so bad that OUR portion of the hospital bill AFTER insurace paid their measley $2,000, was over $60,000 - UM WHAT?!!! 

Yeah, so this has been a year of fighting non-stop with the insurance company to get this cleared up. Needless to say, our part was only supposed to be $7,000 so you can imagine our frustration and the severe anxiety we went through to get this corrected.  But, finally after 11 months of fighting, it is great to say that we finally got it done and that bill is completely PAID IN FULL baby! Oh and we did NOT pay the $60,000 - only our part of the $7,000.  THANK GOD is all we can say! Talk about the perfect Christmas gift this year - a huge stress off of our shoulders for sure.  We were so ecstatic to finally have that cleared up and paid in full that we did may have done a lot of this:

And a lot of this - LOL

Anyway, as you can see, it was a heck of an experience and one I can honestly say that I do NOT want to repeat again. Happy Thursday peeps and thanks for stopping by to say hello! Have a great day and I'll see you on the flip side! :)

Lots of love and hugs,