(Warning: Surgical imagery, literal guts) So, I suppose I almost died a year ago today.

A year ago today, I had a really bad pain in my stomach. My wife also had really bad stomach pain; I was sure mine was just gas -- I felt crazy bloated -- but we went to see her doctor and her doctor was sure she was having gall bladder issues. We left the office and got to the car when my pain suddenly started mounting massively.

I decided a trip to the ER was in order. Like an idiot, I drove there (my wife cannot drive due to narcolepsy). I should have called for an ambulance, despite the ER being only 7 minutes away down a very quick, lightly-trafficked highway. By the time we got there, I was stuck in a doubled-over position. They gave me a vomit bag, checked my vitals, and told me to wait. An ambulance would have had me in a room immediately. >:(

It wasn't long before the vomiting began. I was expelling 12-16oz. of fluid all at once. All told, I would be vomiting more in the next 24 hours than I have in my entire 34 years to date. My wails echoed throughout the ER. Nurses were impressed/horrified at how much I could eject in one go. (I was merely impressed.) They gave me massive doses of dilaudid for pain -- at one point, I just about went unconcious from it -- and unheard of doses of anti-emetics, but no amount of phenergan or ondansetron would abate the expulsions.

"I'm not nauseated," I told the attending surgeon.

"What." his expression told me.

"I don't feel like I have to vomit, I just am vomiting. It feels like there's too much."

So they put me in a CAT scan and found what appeared to be a blockage in my upper intestines. They jammed a tube down my nose and evacuated another liter or so of fluid out of my gut. Seems my digestive tract was on emergency overdrive, trying to figure out what was going wrong. They then shoved a massive amount of radioactive dye down said nose tube and did their damnedest to get as many x-rays as they could before I puked it all back up. This took about 6 tries and 2 hours, and in the end they couldn't see well enough to determine where, exactly, the blockage was -- they could pinpoint it in a 2-D cross-section, but not a 3-D one. Open surgery was called for.

Fortunately, the surgery didn't take nearly as long as expected and no significant damage had been done or yet been done. Somehow, a loop of intenstine had intertwined with another, causing a cinching and almost total blockage. The surgeon was able to manipulate this manually, no cutting required.

He told me later he was glad I came in when I did -- that if I had waited, I had a good chance of sections of intestine becoming gangrenous and going septic. I'm not sure how I could have possibly gone that long -- the pain was unbearable and the vomit infinite -- but I later read horror stories about people in the same situation who didn't seek medical treatment immediately.

To be slightly political, fuck the American Healthcare system -- but, at least I have insurance through my employer and through Medicare (for reasons unrelated to the intestinal trauma). Though I'm in dire straits for affording my Medicare premiums, which is some kind of absurd joke.

My gut is forever marred by a front-butt now.

This lovely lady helped me get through it, though, despite her own ongoing issues. I think she was frequently in more pain than I was. Then again, I had on-demand access to plenty of hydromorphone. All told, I was in the hospital for 7 days, and out of work for a couple months.

But wait, there's more! The wife went in for her own emergency surgery two weeks later. Her gall bladder function was nil -- 0% ejection. They think some source of inflammation resulted in internal scarring until it just couldn't work anymore. Despite the emergency nature of her hospital admission, it took like two days to have the actual surgery. They just kept her off food until they could get her in the OR.

What a shitty month!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We weren't actually married at the time, but we were engaged by October, and got married on December 27th. After all we'd been through, both being broke and broken, and lovers of cooking and vidya, how could we not?

<3

TL;DR -- ah, whatever.