damont

Some of you who read the LJs of

montuos and/or

killernurd may have noted that my father had gone into the hospital last Tuesday for gall bladder surgery. He is now at home recuperating.

The previous posts about this can be found here, here, and here. A lot of the info we first got came from phone calls with my sister in Maryland (who doesn't have an LJ, as opposed to my sister in California who is

wednesday1971). We'd known for a while that Dad was going to need his gall bladder dealt with, and I believe they'd even scheduled it for later this month. Dad's body accelerated the schedule; he had an acute attack over the weekend of the 13-14 while he and Mom were out of town visiting friends. Early last week he was feeling sick and unable to keep anything down (thus very dehydrated); he attributed this to a virus, but when talking with my non-LJ sister and her doctor husband, was told Get Thee To The Doctor *NOW*. Ended up in the ER, with plans for emergency surgery on Tuesday evening.

Tests that evening showed that the situation wasn't quite so critical; urgent, yes, but they could wait until Wednesday to remove the gallbladder. This would give the surgeon a night to sleep, and my dad a night to rehydrate from the IV drip they put in him (plain Ringers, plus some painkillers of course). So on Wed. they removed it, but the gallbladder was actually in far worse condition than they'd thought (adhesions, decay, et cetera ad literal nauseam), so while the -ectomy was still straightforward, it took a lot longer than they'd expected. My sister called again Thursday noon, and he was still very uncomfortable, on pain meds, groggy and going in and out. I got the strong impression they were going to keep him in the hospital until he was able to deal with the pain with pills alone.

Dad got to that stage on Saturday morning, so they sprung him; my sister called with that news while I was at Storvik Investiture (about which more later, in another post). I called Sunday night and talked to him; he sounds a bit weak (no $#@!) but stable. He's likely to be on significant pain meds until the end of January.

montuos says it'll be at least a month before he's back up to full speed, based on her own experience with getting *her* gall bladder removed. Dad says he's feeling a little better every day, which means he's pretty much recovering "on schedule" as 'twere.

Thanks for the prayers and good thoughts and healing whatnot sent my dad's way.