Well, here it is.

Tomorrow's the day: I'll be having surgery to remove my gallbladder. I'm glad it'll be over with soon.

The surgeon, bless his heart, offered to excuse me from work for 3-4 weeks when he found out that I will be getting paid for my time away. Since the surgery will be laparoscopic, that much time off should be more than adequate for complete healing.

The house is clean, the pantry is stocked, and new soft pajamas and slippers have been purchased. After tomorrow I won't have to do a thing but rest and recover. I plan to download some new books onto my Nook, and will probably end up reading a lot for the first few days. This morning I had to go to the hospital for pre-op stuff: blood samples taken, an EKG to make sure my heart was working right, and a chest x-ray to see if my lungs were clear. Apparently all that stuff is necessary prior to being put to sleep.

Other than a few last minute tasks I need to do tonight, I'm pretty well set. I expect I'll be blogging a bit more in the next 3 weeks thanks to a combination of free time and narcotic pain relievers! Stay tuned..

April round up: Scotch eggs, neighborhood mischief, and surgery

The end of April has certainly been eventful around here!

Easter, besides being very late this year, was extremely wet. The trip to the park I had hoped to have was out of the question. I still cooked a big meal, ham and fresh new potatoes, green beans, and strawberries for dessert. And I finally made (and got to taste) Scotch eggs. Somehow I didn't expect them to be as big as they were:

Scotch eggs!

The verdict? I thought they were very tasty. My husband loved them, and finished them off one by one over the next few days. I used a super-mild sausage, and next time will try a spicier one. (I thought they were just a tad bland). They're too much trouble to make very often, and it's really just as well. It's not exactly health food. I only ate one, because I've been having stomach issues for months now and a big chunk of meat and egg like that could really cause me some pain (more about that later).

Easter would have been a fun, cozy day spent at home with good food and movies--except we had and incident in the neighborhood that soured the rest of the afternoon. A sweet lady that lives across the street from us had her house broken into while she was at church Easter morning. Someone kicked open her door, ransacked her house, and stole some valuables. This occurred in broad daylight! If we (or any of the other close neighbors) had happened to look out of a window at the right time, we would have seen it happening. It makes me so angry. The lady is a widow and lives alone, and she's now afraid to stay in her house. She's been staying with one of her adult daughters since it happened, and I don't really blame her. Seeing her house swarming with police cars, and then finding out what had happened, was a real downer on a holiday morning. I surely hope it was only an isolated incident.

Back to the stomach pain I mentioned earlier. In March I had an upper GI endoscopy which revealed a hiatal hernia and acid reflux. I also had an ultrasound of my gallbladder. The ultrasound revealed lots of gallstones and apparently that's responsible for the intense pain I would have from time to time. Both the ultrasound technician and the surgeon noted that I have extreme tenderness on my right side directly under my ribcage. This indicated some inflammation of the gallbladder, due to the stones inside.

So, lucky me. I have to have my gallbladder removed on May 14th. This will be the first surgery of my life, and while I'm not scared, I dread the inconvenience of it all. Not to mention the added medical expenses. But there's one silver lining to the cloud: my work will pay me short-term disability while I'm out, and the surgeon says that even though it will the easier form of the surgery, that he prefers that I stay out of work for 3 to 4 weeks. So I will get a bit of a vacation from work, without having to use up vacation or sick hours.

That's it for April!