Wheee!

I start my new job as a Unix Applications Admin on October 8th.

Ultrasounds!

Here are some ultrasound pictures of my insides prior to my recent surgery.
Here, 2 gallstones are clearly visible inside the gallbladder.
There's a third one.
and this picture has a cunning measuring tool which measured that stone as 1.43cm. Yowch.
lastly, I have a nice healthy right kidney!

Back home

need sleep. Zzzz.

on the mend!

The original surgeon came to see me this morning. Yesterday, during the ERCP, a 4mm gallstone was removed. Pretty big. Since that procedure, I've not had any abdominal pain, so I'm guessing what I had been putting down as post op pain was actually caused by that little blighter. The only pain I have now is a little bit of a sore throat. I'm off home again after lunch.

Slightly worrying...

Someone found my blog by searching for "How to remove a JP drain" on Google. The reason it's worrying? Would you want to have your JP drain removed by someone who had to look up the procedure on Google?

awake again

I'm the other side of my ERCP. I had a sphincterotomy (cutting a sphincter muscle to enlarge it a little - and no... not that sphincter!), and a gall stone removed, that was blocking my biliary duct. When I had the cholecystectomy, the surgeon was unable to perform a cholangiogram (looking inside the bile duct), because the duct was so short. Everything looked OK from the outside, and the risk of damaging something by trying to force his way inside the duct was relatively large, he elected not to do that. Unfortunately, it seems this missed a small gall stone, which moved sometime on Wednesday, and gave me some pretty excrutiating pain for half an hour or so. This then blocked the duct, which meant the bile backed up and ended up in my urine, hence the dark colour.

I'm currently on nil-by-mouth until tomorrow, but I'm able to have visitors. Once again if you don't have current contact details for me, drop me an email at **mo-bap at timothyorguk** (add dots just like in this blog address, but don't add www), and I'll be able to get that.

Oh, and everything happened in a rush this morning, so I didn't bring any games. Booo.

back in the hospital...

My bloodwork came back abnormal. I'm back in the hospital (yay free wireless!) to have Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography so that they can take a look at my insides to see what's going on. Prayers welcome.

A little bit of jaundice...

So... for the past day and a half, my pee has been rather dark, and this morning my eyes are slightly tinged yellow. So I'm going to get some tests done to check on liver function. *sigh*