A week gallbladder free

Found this selfie on my phone just before going into theater last week

I was pretty excited to be here; a week post op and gallbladder free. Ready to take on the world and eat all the things (sensibly and within reason, obviously).

Unfortunately, the reality of my gallbladder free life has been somewhat less than glamorous and not at all what I expected.

My procedure went well and was straight forward (sorry if you’ve already read this on Facebook) but I then spent 6 hours in recovery as the nurses there tried to get me a bed.

I was given the all clear to go home pretty much as soon as I left theater. So it was a day of back and forth – I was staying, I was going, staying, going… And so on until I was discharged at 4.30ish. Apparently I’m the first ever gallbladder removal to not stay overnight at our hospital and not having specific procedures for my follow up in place made the nurses unhappy, along with, what they called, my ‘situation’ (4 kids, one being a baby who still wakes over night and no additional family support to back up James while he cares for me).

Having had four cesareans I kind of assumed the recovery from this keyhole surgery would be easy. Not so. These four tiny (in comparison to my previous) incisions have been much harder to bounce back from and a week down the track I still have two which are very painful and I’m exhausted by doing nothing.

And the mental state that I was so happy about has taken a hit. I had asked my surgeon about picking up and holding Felix and was told that, of course, I would be able to do so, only to learn afterwards that I can lift up to five kilos – my baby is over 9.

Not being able to lift him is pretty crappy but I kinda thought I would be able to hold him and feed him as normal, just with someone else giving him to me. I can’t even do that. We have to snuggle and do feeds lying down and it doesn’t last long before he’s kicking or scratching at my belly.

Apart from sleeping, resting, getting up to eat and sometimes to NaNoWriMo or, in today’s case, blog I’m doing nothing. Everything has been left to James, from night wakings to lunch boxes, dinner, washing and all the things in between. I am so lucky to have such an amazing husband who has picked up everything to let me heal.

I’m feeling pretty useless and down. Wondering why something that seems like it should be so ‘easy’ to heal from, especially when I’ve been told it should be a ‘walk in the park’ compared to cesareans, has been so difficult. I’m missing being able to care for my family, cuddle my babies and wear Felix.

Thankfully, there have been things to appreciate from my place of rest over the past week, too.