Delusions of... Everything

Life After Gallbladder Surgery

It’s been 2 weeks since I had my gallbladder removed.  I tried to go back to work last Tuesday (as in 5 days after surgery), that was a really bad idea.  I was still not feeling well and being at work only made it worse.  I made it for about 4 hours before I went home.  I was to the point where if one more person asked me to do something I would burst out crying.  By Thursday, one week after surgery, I started to feel pretty good.

I got my staples out yesterday and am finally feel 100% “normal”.  I was starting to get a pretty bad rash from staples and the skin around my incesions was very red and angry looking, not to mention painful.  It was a huge relief to get the staples out!  Today is the first day I've worn a bra in 2 weeks, I'm not sure if that's good or not!

As I was walking out of the surgeon's office yesterday he asked me if I still had my appendix.  I told him I did and he told me that if it gave me any trouble to contact him.  I laughed and told him I'd be sure to give him a call if my appendix decided to go south.

It’s been liberating to be able to eat what I want again.  A little too liberating!  I really don't want to gain back the weight I've lost (30 lbs as of surgery day). It’s time to get back to eating more veggies and fruit and less processed foods.  Although that bacon I ate both Saturday and Sunday mornings was pretty damn tasty as was the Mimosa and Bloody Mary!

 

One Inch Stone

So I have to have my gall bladder removed. If you missed it, here is the post about my attack. Just thinking about it makes me cringe!  Last week I met with the Surgeon.  Apparently the gall stone I have is rather large, 1 inch to be exact and will require a much larger incision than is normally used.  Oh joy!

Since the major attack that landed me in the hospital, I've had two other times when my gall bladder has let me know it's not very happy.  I have to stay away from fat, alcohol and for some reason Dave's Killer bread, which I love.  I've been sticking with low fat fish and chicken breasts.  I'm so bored with my food choices.  It sucks.  I'm also still trying to stick with the detox diet, which means avoiding anything white.

The good news is, I'm losing weight.  :/

The surgery has been scheduled for July 28, one week before Blog Fest West!  GAH!  It was his first available appointment and I didn't want to wait another two weeks to have the surgery.  The Surgeon told me I'd be back to normal in 5 days...

To all those attending Blog Fest West, I'm apologizing now for what I'm sure will be a messy house.  My family will clean, but it will be their version of clean, not mine.  I'll make sure there are clean sheets and towels and that's about all I can promise. :/

Pain beyond belief

About a week ago I was happily getting ready for work.  Handy Man happened to be home because we were having a new refrigerator delivered.  I had drank about half my smoothie, went to rouse Dancing Daughter out of bed when the most excruciating stomach pains had me doubling over.

At first I thought it was gas even though the pains were very high, so I laid down on my stomach on the floor (weird I know but that sometimes helps me relieve gas pain).  Not one bit of relief.  I crawled on to the sofa and told Handy Man there was something very wrong with me.  I was doing "labor breathing" (anyone who has given birth knows what I'm talking about) and trying very hard not to moan or cry out in pain.  That didn't help either.  And I did end up moaning and crying.

It became evident very quickly that I needed to go to the ER.  DD found a ride to school and Handy Man took me to the hospital, which is luckily very, very close to our house.  They took one look at me, got a wheel chair and took me to a room, triaging me on the way.  They hooked me up, asked me a bunch of questions, gave me some pain meds, which did not work, gave me an EKG and had me try to go pee, which I couldn't do.

All this time I felt like I was dying... Oh and Handy Man had to run home so the refrigerator could be delivered.

Finally they brought me this GI "cocktail" which tasted horrible, but I was very thankful for because it took my pain away immediately.  My blood work came back and they said everything looked fine, it wasn't my heart, liver, kidneys or gall bladder.  Because of how I responeded to the GI cocktail the ER Doc said he suspected an ulcer, prescribed prilosec, told me to go see my Dr asap and I was on my way.

My Dr scheduled me for an ultrasound where they found lots of gall "gunk" and a gallstone.  So is it gall bladder disease, an ulcer or both?  Gah!

Now I'm scheduled to see a GI Dr next week, meanwhile I'm not eating anything that might bother my gall bladder or an ulcer, which is interesting because aside from nuts and alcohol (mostly just wine on the weekends) I haven't been eating anything that should have made my gall bladder angry.  Handy Man and I have still been following the Detox diet.

After doing some research I found out that millions of people have gall bladder disease without knowing it, they never have symptoms or an attack.  I also learned that losing weight too fast can trigger an attack.  Being that I lost 15 pounds in 3 weeks I'm guessing that if it is my gall bladder, that's what caused it.

I can tell you that I hope I never feel that pain again.  It was truly the most pain I've felt since being in labor.  Not a good time.

RSVP

Are you coming West

For the next fun filled Blog Fest

R.S.V.P. Here

Wine Country Part III - The Finale

If you missed the beginning of my wine country journey you can read about it here.  Part II is continued here.

The tasting and tour at King Estate was something I was very excited for.  After tasting other Willamette Valley wine I was looking forward to tasting wine from a larger winery and see what went on behind the scenes.  As with every other aspect of this trip I was not disappointed.

We sampled some Pinot Gris first, both the oak and stainless steel aged and not surprisingly I loved them both, but enjoyed the stainless steel one slightly more.  Kevin, who poured for us, also took us on a tour.  Being the wild women we are one of us dropped the f-bomb which broke the ice with Kevin (and I believe got us some preferred treatment, see the tower shot of us)

Kevin told us all about the size of the property and the organic growing of the grapes.

The inside of the building was just as impressive as the outside.

How cool is that door?!  There were a few of them throughout the winery.  The whole place was immaculately clean, I was impressed.

We were told about the making of the wine, the pressing, the fermenting, the transferring to oak barrels.  It was all rather fascinating.

The next place we went was to see where they store some of the barrels of wine.  We learned all about "toasting" of the barrels (the inside of the barrels are charred to give the wine different flavors). I thought this was the prettiest room in the winery.

Can you believe the size of those barrels?

 

We went back to the tasting room to sample a few more wines, then we went to the tower where we met some fun people and drank more wine (shocking, I know).

We headed back to the house to prepare for dinner, this involved drinking more wine!  The journey back might have included some mooning and flashing done by someone in the car to the brave souls who were walking, this might have caused one of the brave souls to jump in the car to avoid peeing her pants was uneventful.

Dinner at the main building was beyond words.  The food was perfect, the wine was perfect and the company was perfect.  I'll let the pictures speak for themselves!

Appetizers:

The main course:

Completely forgot to take pictures of the desserts.  We ordered five and passed them around the table taking a bite of each until they were gone.  One of us might have latched on to one and refused to let go We all shared nicely.

The wine obviously consumed:

 

The loud, gluttonous pigs happy diners!

I started the telling of this epic journey with Sherri and I'm ending it with Sherri.  I can't thank her enough for putting this trip together for us.  I had the best time and I can't wait to do it again!

 

 

Dinner with Friends

It started out innocently enough.  My friends and I getting together for dinner.  We try to do that every few weeks and it's usually pretty casual.  This time it evolved into a whole theme dinner revolving around a simple email from S saying she would bring Cuban Stir Fry.  Pretty soon, with emails flying back and forth, it became a full Cuban dinner.  One of the emails included a link to this website where I found a Mojito Cake recipe.  The dinner host, K, found a really, really yummy recipe for an avocado lobster appetizer on the same site.

Just look at those babies!

Oh man, they were so good.  She made them with shrimp instead of lobster, which would have cost $60.  I loved them with shrimp.  They would be good with crab too.

J brought all the fixin's for Mojitos.  They were very refreshing and tasty!

The salad was provided by F.  It paired very nicely with the meal and was an explosion of flavors.

S brought some wine she made.  It was a fruity tasting white wine.  F and I really enjoyed it.  I don't usually like white wine, so that was an accomplishment.  She also brought the main dish.  It was a Cuban Stir fry with lots of colorful peppers, talk about an explosion of flavors!

The other J brought beans and rice... So yummy!

Just look at that dinner!  And then came dessert.

 

While the food cooked we all caught up.  The only time we are all together is usually at these dinners, even though some of us see each other more often.  We mostly talked about our kids at this dinner.

 

We had the cutest male join us for dinner...

His name is Tsavo and it was love at first site.

By the time we relaxed to the living room K's husband had come home and we were getting loopy from being up so late.  We all lasted until after 11pm!!!  Who says we're old?!

This was S ordering me to not put these pics on my blog!  Anything taken after this point will stay safely on my computer, unless I need them for blackmailing!  Let's just say cup sizes were discussed with examples...

I love getting together with these women, we have the best time!

*I'll post the Moijto cake recipe with some pics tomorrow*

Watch Out Virginia...

...Asthmagirl and The Baroness are on their way, but first they stopped at the pub for some food porn!

It was really lovely meeting The Baroness.  She is delightful and funny and has a very soft soothing voice.  I kind of felt like a crow cawing over velvet when we were conversing.  Asthmagirl is her usual hilarious self and she seemed very relaxed at the pub.  I'm thinking just having The Baroness with her was having a calming affect!

I hope you all have a great time at Blogfest!  I can't wait to hear all about it and see all the great photos!

Friends, Wine, Facebook and So Much More

On Friday night I got together with my friends.  We don't get together often enough as was obvious by the rate of our conversations.  I don't think any of us stopped talking the whole time we were together, except maybe to eat!

I love these women more than I can say!  That's me on the far left!

JHW was our host.  She cooked up a mean chicken, pasta, creamy pesto dish that was delicious.

JLA told us of her recent knee surgeries, yes surgeries.  She had both done at once.  It all looks very painful to me.

Here's a better picture of her (light blue sweater) with FF.

We talked and talked and talked and talked and talked some more...

Did I mention we talked?!

We drank much of this...

SB is somewhat of a wine expert so we did a mini tasting.  We got a little lesson in how to determine what we like in a wine based on the tasting.  It was really interesting.  We are planning to do a weekend wine tasting soon. I think we planned if for April!  I can't wait.

After dinner we had some of this with our wine...

Ummm, YUM!

Then at some point JHW's husband made up these...

It's is some kind of martini, I can't remember what it was called, well because I had my share of the wine (shown above) and I'm perimenopausal which means I can't remember anything anyway.  I only took one drink to taste it, no that's not me sniffing it, it's FF.

The conversation moved to twitter and facebook.  FF and JLA don't didn't have have facebook accounts on Friday when we got together, so JHW gave them a lesson.  By Saturday they were both requesting to be my friend. :)

We have entirely too much fun...

Here are some other topics we discussed:

Children, specifically education.  What schools are best?  How to avoid bad influences?  It really came down to being very involved with your child's school.

The economy.  JLA's husband who's a contractor has been booked a year out for 12 years, now has no jobs lined up.  A friend of someone else got laid off, he has a mortgage and two children.  Most of the guys in the steel fabricating shop where I worked have been laid off.  KMA, who has a small apartment complex just found out one of her best tenants lost his job and he has to move in with friends.

Perimenopause, enough said.

Phelpsing, as it is now a verb... Straight from the urban dictionary:
To smoke some pot, especially out of a bong.  When I go phelpsing, I make sure I have nothing important to do afterwards, because I'd be too high!

How smart can the Smart Car be if it only gets 41 miles to the gallon and looks the way it does?

Christianity and liberalism, yes they can co-exists.

Josh Groban, not to be confused with Josh Brolin who is with Diane Lane, and whose step mom is Barbara Streisand.

Politics, we are all confused and baffled how government officials think they don't have to pay taxes.  I mean really?!  We also talked about Supreme Court Justices, but I think I was still thinking about Josh Groban and/or Josh Brolin so I was kinda lost.  Plus it was getting a little late.

I know there was more, but I can barely keep up with us!