If someone tells you their gallbladder burst, they're lying

At least those were the exact words of the surgeon when he came out to report on Mark's surgery.  Those words were followed by 'Mark's burst.'

Let's start at the beginning shall we?

We had a good Christmas.  My awesome Cousin Laurie came to visit for the weekend and we had a good time just visiting.  On her last day here a group of us drove up to Salt Lake to eat at Cheesecake Factory.  Mark came with us.  It was his first real outing for a while, so it was good for him to get out of the house.  He was in the wheelchair the whole time, just because he's been getting less and less mobile recently, but he was glad to get out.  That evening we went and saw The Hobbit, and again Mark came with us.  We had a hard time getting him up the stairs to his seat, but once there we all enjoyed the movie.

The next day was Christmas Eve and his mom's family had a traditional get together for the afternoon that Mark was able to make it to.  He used the walker to get in the building, sat in a comfy chair (rather than a metal folding chair) and managed to stay awake for the food but nodded off towards the end.  He missed the kids acting out the Nativity (Shelly was Mary and Nikki was Jesus, Emily was asleep and Jason didn't want to participate...).  He woke up at the end when the Santa gifts were handed out.  We got the wheelchair out to get him back to the car though.  He wasn't up for walking anymore.

The next morning was Christmas!  I woke him up and got him into a wheelchair so he could come be part of Christmas.  He was reluctantly willing to be woken up so early, but he was a good sport about it.  We had so many gifts!  It got a bit crazy and presents were being ignored, so we took a few breaks in the gift opening process to be able to enjoy the ones we had already opened.  We finally got to the last round at 2:00...  The last several years we have had a rather modest Christmas (a thrift store gift from us and a few dollar store things to make up some numbers, and then whatever Grandma got).  This year was a veritable feast!  The kids got so much stuff!

While I am grateful for the 'stuff,' I am far more touched by the sentiment behind the 'stuff.'  The vast majority of our gifts were some form of anonymous. Either the people giving them didn't know us (we had someone contact us about a Sub for Santa), or we had no idea who had given them to us (we had a quite a few gifts left on our doorstep, or dropped off by people who claimed not to be the giver).  The outpouring of love and consideration of us was super awesome to witness!  Through all of this I have never felt like I was facing it alone, and Christmas was just another reminder of the amazing people who are out there thinking of us!  Thank you.

That evening was another party - this time for Mark's dad's family.  Mark again made it into the building with a walker and needed a wheelchair to get out.  He managed to stay awake for most of that one though.  I think it was the food he was munching on the whole time...  :)

So, the next morning....

Mark woke up early, especially for him.  He has been sleeping rather a lot the last couple of weeks, so when he woke up at 6am and wanted to get out of bed, I was a bit surprised.  We spent the next couple of hours trying to get Mark comfortable.  He went from the bed, to the couch, to the other couch, sitting up on the couch, lying down on the couch, to a chair, back to the couch, back to bed, from one side of the bed to the middle of the bed, to the other side of the bed (blankets all tangled up around him and pillows all over the floor), trying to get out of bed on his own (he hasn't been able to do that for over a week), to the bathroom, back to the couch, to the egg chair, to another chair, to the egg chair cushion on the floor, and on and on like that for hours!

The last time he was like that was in the hospital back in Oct, and we thought it was the meds.  I realized then that I can handle him like that for a little bit, but it is so tiring that it takes too much out of me and I get grumpy with him really quickly, especially when I have other people (like 5 little kids) needing my attention.  So, in an effort to save Mark from, well ...me... I left him in the care of others while I went to Michaels with several family members to take advantage of an awesome coupon (40% entire purchase!).  While we were gone I got a call asking where his stomach meds were (he's takes Zantac while he's on steroids).  That was the first I knew of him having pain in his stomach.

When we got back, we decided to go to a family get together for my dad's side of the family.  The party was over 30 minutes away and we debated wether we should leave with Mark doing so poorly.  Finally I gave him an extra dose of steroids (just in case it was brain swelling causing his discomfort), decided that if he wasn't better by the time we got back we'd take him to the hospital, and then left.  Mark's parents were there with Mark and there were at least two adults with the kids, so we knew he was in capable hands. 

While we were there we got a text from home saying that Mark was on the way to the ER.  Turns out Mark was occasionally having a hard time breathing and they finally decided it was worth having him checked out.

We left the party and headed back to the hospital.  The whole time we were waiting for test results we sat there wondering if we were over reacting.  Mark seemed to have so few obvious symptoms, occasionally complained of pain, randomly had a hard time breathing, he was mostly just restless.  It seemed hard to justify a trip to the ER...

Then the test results came back.  His gallbladder was inflamed and would need to come out.  Soon.  As in right now.  The ER doc gave the surgeon two gallbladder patients at the same time.  The surgeon opted to do the easy surgery first.  Apparently having a brain tumor and being on a medication that recommends no surgery for 4 weeks before and after treatment complicates surgery...  Who knew?  That and his gallbladder was much worse and had more potential for complications.

So Mark waited the hour or so it took for the other surgery to finish and then headed back to surgery himself.  I was with him in holding and he was fine at first, but towards the end of his wait he had an attack that made it really hard to breathe and he was very anxious and very uncomfortable.  His voice had a total change, his eyes were all wrong (glossy, unfocusing, almost rolling back into the top of his head), and he was trying everything he could think of to find a position that would allow him to get a breath (most of the things he could think of were not exactly safe or smart for how poorly he was feeling).

I was glad to see him wheeled back, because it meant that he would be asleep soon and out of pain.

We waited for almost 2 hours.  When the surgeon finally came out his first words were 'Mark is doing fine.'  Followed by the incredible 'I've done ten thousand of these, and I can count on my fingers, of just one hand, how many burst gallbladders I've seen.  If someone tells you their gallbladder burst, they're lying.  Mark's burst.'  He then described the puss and how it was spreading all over and other gross stuff.

The surgeon cleaned him out and put in a drain so they could keep an eye on how his insides were doing, and make sure there was no infection left.  He said that even without the brain complications this surgery would be a 4-5 day hospital stay, so he said we should expect him to spend something close to a week in here.  Gallbladder removals are typically same day surgery...  

We asked the surgeon how long he had to have had this (since we didn't even know Mark was having stomach pain until a few hours before surgery), and the doc said it had to have been inflamed and irritated for weeks and had probably been burst for a day or two.  We. had. no. idea.  None.  We actually were wondering if we were even justified in taking him to the ER.  

Mark is more than able to tell us when he's in pain, he just didn't.  I'm not sure if he didn't know he was in pain, or if he thought it was minor and would just go away on it's own and didn't mention it.  But I'm pretty sure that a burst gallbladder should be painful.  Pretty sure...

Physical therapy got him out of bed yesterday.  With one person on each side of him, basically holding him up, he was able to stand up (or at least put some sort of weight on his legs), side step about 10 inches and sit back down.  Then when they asked if he wanted to get back in bed or stand back up, he opted for standing up again.  That's as much as he has been capable of so far, but he had rather a bit of pain meds in his system at the time.

So, now we have a waiting game.  It is totally possible, probable even, that his rapid decline of the past few weeks has been due to this inflammation and infection.  It's also possible that it is due to tumor regrowth.  We are hoping that we can blame the gallbladder for most of it and we can get him back functioning much more closely to normal.  If not...  well, we're trying not to think about that yet.  We are just sitting and watching.  He's been pretty much asleep since surgery.  He did have an 11 minute seizure as he was coming out of anesthesia, so that might be part of what's making him so tired.  Only time will tell at this point...