lifeafter50

I’m a storyteller. I think this makes my life exciting. Ordinary life is better when told in a story.

    Several years ago I had my gall bladder removed.  The Dr. told me this was the most common, “ordinary” surgery that he preformed.  In fact, he had a student doctor working with him one summer, who asked if he ever did anything else.   All of this was to reassure me that nothing would go wrong.

     The plan was for me to be at the hospital, prepared for surgery by 10 :00 AM and I would probably go home that night.   We told our four children that they would hit the gall bladder with a laser gun and suck it out with a straw through a little hole they made near my belly button.   The Dr. said I would have three stitches that would melt.

     When the surgeon came out to talk to my husband, long after the surgery should have been completed, he sat down on the coffee table (like they do in the movies) and said, “She’s a handful isn’t she?”.   Of course, I wasn’t there, but my husband is a storyteller, too.   Apparently, my ordinary surgery was so ordinary after all.   My organs were in the wrong places.   The Dr. said he put the scope in to look at my gall bladder and he was looking at the back of my abdomen.   They opened me up, 47 staples worth, and put everything back “normal”.  Instead of going home that night, I wasn’t allowed to stand up for 6 days.

     I often wonder why “ordinary things” never seem ordinary when I’m involved.   My brother said it was so I’d have another good story to tell.

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