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The phrase "when it rains, it pours" seems to have become the most apt description of what my life has become lately. I warn you, this is a rant, and I shall be using foul language.
Where to begin? Part of it started 4 years ago when I started to get really bad stomach pain almost on a daily basis, over those 4 years every doctor I went to kept saying it was acid reflux (because I'm overweight) and would prescribe me antacids and send me on my merry way. I kept taking them for 4 years, it helped manage the pain for the most part, I still had pain on occasion, but I'd just grit my teeth and muddle through it. This past July, just muddling through the pain wasn't enough anymore, the medicine had stopped helping and I was having pain almost every single day. It finally got so bad that I had my roommate take me to the ER because my husband was being an a** and wouldn't wake up.
When I was in the ER, I explained my symptoms as I had done 2 times before and the doctor asked me if I had ever been checked for gall stones, I hadn't, so they gave me an ultrasound and lo and behold, I did have gall stones. Finally a proper diagnosis, I could finally get something done about it! Problem was, I had missed so much work from the pain that my boss forced me to go on medical leave and I needed $1000 down for the surgery and $800 down for my hospital stay for my recovery, which was only supposed to be a day at most, but I'll get to that in a minute.
While I was waiting to get the surgery, I tried a fundraising site, which helped a little, but it wasn't enough. My mother in law ended up spotting us the $1000 in spite of us already draining her savings because we needed help financially from me being out of work, and my mom spotted me the $800.
I was so happy, I was finally able to get rid of the diseased gall bladder that had caused me so much pain and anguish over the years. The day finally came for the surgery, it was supposed to be done laproscopically, (forgive me if I spelled that incorrectly) with only 3 small incisions, one in my belly button, one on my mid section, and one where the gall bladder is. I woke up from the anesthesia expecting only a minor pain in those areas because that's what I was told. What I woke up to was a MASSIVE amount of pain on the right side of my abdomen. Turned out that they had to cut me completely open to get to my gall bladder because my right (and only) kidney had FUSED TO MY LIVER, and my gall bladder had somehow wiggled its way between them. So I have a good foot long incision on my belly, on top of one that I already had from when I had my left kidney removed as a baby, it looks like someone tried to cut me in half a long time ago, then later just tried to disembowel me.
So, of course, because of that, I had to stay in the hospital for at least 4 days, no big deal right? WRONG! The antibiotic they put me on after my surgery to prevent me from getting any infections cause me to go into ******** renal failure. I was only a few inches away from either dying, or having to go on dialysis for the rest of my life, my mom and mother in law were calling everyone they knew to get tested for a compatible kidney. I was so scared that my pain meds weren't working and I was freaking out so badly that my nurse tried to give me Valuim to calm me down and get me to rest, all it did was make me start to shake uncontrollably. Lucky for me, though, once they took me off the antibiotic my body started to normalize. But it caused my 4 day stay to turn into 11 days.
Once I finally was able to go home, I was pretty much on bed rest for about 3 weeks. While I was recovering at home, I started having fluid build up at the base of my incision, and it hurt like no ******** tomorrow. After about a week, it finally started draining, but I went to the ER for safe measure to make sure it didn't get infected. It was discovered while I was there that I had a second mass of fluid building up along where my drainage tube was after my surgery. So I had to have it checked out a couple weeks ago and they said it's not getting bigger and not showing signs of being infected. First bit of good news in a while.
So I'm finally fit to go back to work and something is very off. I worked in a reservation call center for a few hotels in the city I live in and it's the off season, so things had slowed down. But I couldn't help worry because we were getting anywhere from 1/3 less calls than the same time last year, to half the calls we had last year. I had been back 3 weeks (just enough time to not associate it with my physical condition) and I got called to the office and they told me they had to lay me off. So now I'm jobless. And I've got my husband, roommate, and mother in law on my a** constantly to find a new job. What they don't get is that it might take a little bit to find one, my best friend has been trying to find a job for a year with no luck.
And that's my story. TL;DR version: Had surgery, almost died, massive medical debt (which I forgot to go over), and I got laid off.
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