Episode II - Attack of the Stones

Y'all remember the Kidney stone that my pregnant wife just had removed. Well she started having some pain around her ribcage the first week of September that she described as "like a metal band tightening around [her] bra-line".

The best the docs could tell us was to give her some Tylenol-3 (hooray Codeine!) and Zantac and have her rest in a tub. While this worked, she was continuing to have episodes so we scheduled a visit to the doctor's office.

Everything kinda happened quickly after that (but don't worry, it's a happy ending... kinda). She got there and the doctors hooked her up to a monitor to listen to the baby's heartbeat and see if she was having contractions. Which she was. Every 1-2 minutes.

She called me on the way to the Maternity Ward in tears, worked up over the fact that she was headed back when we'd figured we wouldn't be back there until it was time for her to give birth in November. I skipped out of a training session I was in and took the rest of the day off to be with her.

A few shots of whatchacallit and she was no longer contracting, but the doctor on duty was concerned about her recurring pain (FINALLY! A doctor that listens!) and scheduled her for an ultrasound. What seemed like an eternity later, the results were in: Gallstones.

You're shitting us, right? First kidney stones, now gallstones.

"Look at it this way hon," I told my wife, "there's no other organ that makes stones." I have no idea if this is the case, but I've never heard of a spleenstone, have you. Nope, just kidney and gallstones.

So we're not entirely sure if this means that she's going to have to deliver via c-section or what other considerations there are going to be, but at some point the gall bladder's coming out.

For now, we're managing her diet to keep out saturated fats and prevent more episodes. Which is interesting, but not as difficult as we'd first feared since there's so much fat-free food out there.

So, yeah, it's been an interesting month.