I want feedback on my writing, too!

gp2.0

Thu, Sep 11 2014, 2:34 pm

I wrote up my experience with gallbladder attacks and was rejected from frum magazines. I would love some critique! I have my own theories why it was rejected but I'd like to hear from you. I'll post part 1 now and part 2 later.

Part 1

I'm just hungry, I thought to myself on a peaceful Shabbos morning in July. There was a slight feeling of nausea deep in my stomach, and I was still adjusting to the hunger cravings that accompanied nursing my three-month-old daughter.

I searched through the kitchen for something nutritious to eat, finally settling on some tuna spread and crackers. But the stomachache worsened after just a few bites, little twists and curls of pain rising to the surface from a place I couldn't pinpoint, so I put the tuna back into the fridge and went to my bedroom, planning on relaxing while I played with my baby.

As I bent to put my baby onto the bed, it hit me. Crushing pain squeezed my stomach, leaving me breathless. It felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. I didn't know which was worse, the pain crippling my abdomen or the sudden inability to breathe. Rushing to the window, I opened it and put my head right next to the screen, sucking in half-lungfuls of air. I couldn't expand my chest to take a full breath, and my stomach felt as if it was being twisted in a vise.

Trying not to panic, I reassured myself that I was breathing, even if it felt like I wasn't. The pain radiated towards my back and right shoulder. Frantically, I scanned my memory for the first aid I had learned in school. It was the left shoulder that I needed to worry about for a heart attack, right? So at least this wasn't a heart attack, I reassured myself. Then I panicked again. Heart attack? What was I thinking? I was only twenty-two. Women who were barely legal adults did not have heart attacks.

My daughter gazed at me worriedly with big, serious eyes. I tried smiling at her to keep her calm, but she could tell something was wrong.

I curled in on myself with pain, rocking slightly and moaning, and then leaned over, supporting myself on the bed, and tried to breathe. I had been in labor a little over three months earlier. The pain had been terrible, despite the epidural, because my baby's weight had been pressing into my lower back throughout most of the labor.

The pain I was experiencing now wasn't that bad, but it was a close second, and the panic and confusion that I felt kept escalating the pain. At least when I had been in labor, my midwife and husband had been there with a full hospital staff nearby. Now I was alone.

I tried talking to my daughter in an attempt to calm my racing heart, but my voice came out in erratic gasps, and my chest was shuddering. It would be another hour until my husband came home from shul, and I didn't know what to do. What if I collapsed? What would happen to my baby?

I paced back and forth for a moment, and then, coming to a decision, left my apartment and walked out into the hallway of the apartment building. Some of my neighbors were in the hallway of the floor below, chatting while they watched their children play. They greeted me cheerfully, thinking I had come out just to talk.

"I don't feel so well," I gasped, stopping halfway down the steps.

"You mean, like a cold? Or…" After one look at my white face, Mrs. Reich gently took my baby from my arms. "Just in case," she said. "Let me hold her."

"I don't know what's wrong with me," I told them. "I feel like I can't breathe." My voice was still coming out funny, my breath shuddering as if I'd just run up all six flights to my apartment.

Looking worried, Mrs. Weintraub said she'd watch the kids who were playing in the hallway while Mrs. Reich accompanied me back to my apartment with my baby. I sat down on the couch while she stood, still holding my daughter. "Do you want me to call Hatzolah?" she asked.

I didn't know. I felt a little better than I had before. I was breathing somewhat more normally now, perhaps because someone else was taking care of my baby, and I didn't have to panic about collapsing and my daughter being alone. But the pain flickered constantly in my abdomen. Was this enough pain to justify calling Hatzolah on Shabbos? I had no idea.

"I think I should call Hatzolah," she said. "Where's your phone?"

I nodded in agreement, saving my breath, and showed her to the phone. As I did, I began going into some sort of shock. I was moving, it was my hand that gave her the phone, my ears that listened to her call for Hatzolah, but I felt unattached, like I was dreaming. This was crazy. None of this was actually happening to me, while I was all alone, and on Shabbos of all days. Was it?

The first Hatzolah member showed up in less than two minutes, and within thirty seconds two more members joined the first, greeting him cheerfully.

"How did you get here so fast?" one of them asked.

"Oh, I was at a kiddush nearby," he replied. He took my wrist, counting my pulse, and asked me where it hurt. I pointed to my upper abdomen. "Arrhythmia," he murmured, and thought for a moment.

"This seems like a gallstone attack to me," he said.

Gallstone attack? Wasn't I too young for that? I would later find out that for men, gallstone attacks are more common once they reach their fifties. But for women, many factors come into play, including…pregnancy, which can cause gallstones to develop.

"Oh! That makes sense," said Mrs. Reich, adjusting my baby on her hip. "I had my gallbladder removed a few years ago, after my third baby."

The Hatzolah members nodded at each other and then looked at me. "Do you want to go to the hospital? I think you should, just to be sure."

I didn't know. It was Shabbos. What was I supposed to do? "I guess so," I said. The pain had lessened slightly, but I didn't want to be one of those people who declined going to the hospital and collapsed within the hour. I had always been the conscientious, careful type. "Okay, I'll go," I decided. "Let me just get a bottle for my baby…" Out came the one emergency bottle of frozen milk, and we were ready to go.

I was still in a daze. Mrs. Reich assured me not to worry about my baby, that she would be well taken care of, and I nodded gratefully. The pain lessened as I stepped into the ambulance, and I felt slightly foolish. Maybe I was making a big deal out of nothing? And on Shabbos, too? But no, I told myself, the Hatzolah members wouldn't be taking me in if they thought this was nothing.

"I get gallstone attacks a couple times a year," the Hatzolah member who had taken my pulse told me. He was in his late forties, with a cholent belly, salt-and-pepper beard and reassuring smile. Absently, he smoothed his graying beard as we sat on the built-in benches inside the ambulance. "They're terrible," he said. "You feel like you're going to pass out from the pain."

I nodded. That's what it had felt like.

The streets of Borough Park were empty, and within minutes, we were at Maimonides hospital. "All right, let's do this the right way," he said, after conferring with another Hatzolah member, and asked me to get onto the stretcher before they took me into the crowded emergency room.

"Hey, how are you doing, Mr. Spitzer?" the Hatzolah member asked an elderly man sitting up on his stretcher, who grumbled a reply, but smiled. "He's here every other week. Hypochondriac," he joked, and I smiled, too.

My husband arrived forty-five minutes later, out of breath and panicked after having run the ten long blocks to the hospital, not knowing much about what had happened to me, except that I'd been in pain and left in an ambulance. At that point the pain was really ebbing, nearly gone, and I tried to quash the guilty feelings now rising to the surface - that I'd overreacted, that I'd worried everyone for nothing. I reassured him I was all right, and asked how our baby was doing. "She's fine," he said.

He sat there with me, while we waited for the nurse to do her rounds, as I had a sonogram done, when they asked if it hurt when they pressed here and here and what about there.

They concluded that yes, I had gallstones and yes, I had probably had a gallstone attack. They asked if I had any nausea, and I said that I had experienced slight nausea earlier but it was gone now. So they told me that I could go home if I wanted to, but I needed to follow up with my doctor as soon as possible.

I agreed, and my husband and I walked home ten blocks, up five flights of stairs, and picked up our baby, who had fallen asleep peacefully, from Mrs. Reich. Then we went home to start the Shabbos seudah.

However, as we walked home the pain had started up again. Not terrible, stabbing pain, as it had been during the attack, but a slow, steady, constant throb in my abdomen. The nausea was returning, too, and I had no appetite. My husband made kiddush and I had some grape juice and a tiny piece of challah, and nursed my daughter.

Over the next few hours the nausea grew, and finally I did throw up. I felt somewhat relieved. At last, an outward physical sign of how sick I felt inside. I stayed in bed the rest of the afternoon, propped up on pillows because it hurt to lie down flat, took a couple of tylenol tablets, and went to sleep.

The next day, Sunday, I felt pretty good. My abdomen was sore, and I assumed this was just the aftereffect from the attack that had ravaged my insides. I went to the doctor anyway, at my husband's urging, but I felt basically fine and hoped it would stay that way.

The gallbladder, my doctor explained, is a small organ just a few inches long. It is connected to the liver, pancreas and stomach via several small ducts. The liver constantly produces bile, a substance that helps the stomach digest fat. Bile is stored in the gallbladder, and when fatty food reaches the stomach, the gallbladder secretes enough bile to help the stomach break down the fats.

Sometimes, eating an excess of fatty foods, genetics, or other factors, including pregnancy, will cause the bile in the gallbladder to form into stones. These stones can sit in the gallbladder for years, causing no pain or harm. But if one of them passes out of the gallbladder and get stuck in one of the ducts, it causes a gallstone attack. I listened carefully and decided to start a low fat diet, to keep from aggravating the situation. My appetite still hadn't returned anyway, and I was living on toast, orange juice, and applesauce.

Monday morning my doctor called, sounding worried. "I'm going to need you to come in for more tests," he said. "The numbers are indicating some kind of hepatitis." My liver numbers were so elevated that the blood test had been returned with an <-----ALERT next to the numbers instead of the usual Low, Moderate or High indicators. However, since I had received vaccinations, the doctor told me that he was pretty sure it wasn't viral hepatitis, but rather an inflamed liver caused by the gallstone passing through.

I went back for more tests, and my doctor advised that I schedule gallbladder surgery to remove my gallbladder. I shrugged this off, not wanting to believe it. Why should I take such drastic action after one attack? I wanted to try a low-fat diet first, and perhaps some natural alternatives for flushing gallstones. What if I never got another attack?

"You will have another attack eventually," he warned me, with the wisdom of experience, and referred me to a surgeon. I kept returning for more tests over the next couple of weeks, and the numbers on my blood tests gradually went down, which meant the gallstone had passed on its own - this time.

I continued to have no appetite and was really tired for the rest of the week while I recuperated, sleeping 12 hour nights (though of course waking to feed my baby) and napping in the morning and afternoon, while my baby napped.

By the end of the week, the numbers were back to normal. This confirmed the theory that the hepatitis had been caused by the gallstone attack. During the attack, a gallstone must have lodged itself in or near the hepatic duct, the duct that connects the liver to the gallbladder, and now that it had passed, the numbers were improving as the liver healed itself.

At last, I felt like things were going back to normal. I was completely ready to put the whole saga behind me. Now I could get on with my life, eating a low-fat diet to avoid producing any more gallstones, and forget all about that one crazy time that I had to go to the hospital.

If only. That was just the beginning.

gp2.0

Thu, Sep 11 2014, 8:37 pm

Part 2

We planned a road trip for the last week of August. My parents had driven their van down from New York to Florida, and my husband, baby and I flew down a week later to join them. We would stay there a week and then drive the van back up to New York while my parents and sisters flew back. It was a very enjoyable week. My baby loved the pool and the extra attention from her Zaidy, Bobby and aunts. My husband and I shopped for groceries we would need to take along with us while we drove back up to New York, and then we got ready for Shabbos. We planned to leave Sunday morning.

Early Shabbos morning, at about four a.m., the second attack came. I huddled on my bed, clutched my stomach, and rocked back and forth, taking deep breaths and looking at the clock glowing in the dark. After all, the first attack had lasted for only about an hour, and the worst part had only been for about twenty minutes. But this one was worse. I woke up my husband and asked if he could find me some Advil. My doctor had cautioned against Tylenol, as my liver numbers had been so elevated with the last attack. I swallowed two Advil with some flat seltzer (the first thing my husband grabbed from the refrigerator) and prayed the pain would lessen. A few hours later, it finally did.

The men came home from shul for the morning seudah and once again I had no appetite. I ate a little, but mostly just sat there, making conversation, trying to smile and laugh and pretend everything was okay while I massaged my abdomen, which murmured its discomfort. That murmur soon turned into a whimper, and I spent the rest of the afternoon with a frozen water bottle held to my stomach. Advil wasn't helping to soothe the constant, throbbing pain.

That night, the pain grew progressively worse. Nausea rose in my throat, and I threw up six times throughout the night. By eight in the morning, I hadn't slept more than twenty minutes all night long. I'd been awake, tossing and turning in pain. I couldn't lie flat, I couldn't lie propped up on pillows. Standing, sitting, walking, it all hurt with a deep cramping, stabbing pain. My baby woke up to eat and I could barely nurse her. Her knees pressed against my stomach and I couldn't sit up straight. I nursed on one side and then gave her back to my husband, curling into a ball and rocking back and forth.

My husband called my doctor back in New York, who said that this sounded like a stomach virus to him. It wasn't consistent with symptoms of a gallbladder attack. A gallbladder attack wouldn't have had me in pain like this all night long. He added, however, that he couldn't diagnose over the phone, and advised us to go to the emergency room. My husband drove to the pharmacy first, to get our baby some bottles of formula just in case it would be a few hours until we got back home. I carried her to my mother and calmly told her that I was going to the emergency room because I was in agony.

Ten minutes after we left, I realized that I'd left my insurance card in my wallet back at home. We turned around and went back for it. The pain wasn't so bad now. Pain is always partly psychological, and just as with my first attack, as soon as I was on the way to the hospital, the pain lessened slightly, at least enough for me to think coherently.

Aventura Hospital had billboards next to the highway proclaiming that the wait time in their emergency room was three minutes or less. Sure enough, two minutes after I walked in, gave them my name, and sat down, my insurance card in one hand and a plastic bag in the other, in case I needed to throw up again, the nurse at the front desk called me over. I sat down next to her desk and told her about my abdomen pain, which I rated a ten on a scale of one to ten. My husband walked in after parking the car, as I told her about throwing up six times and being up all night in pain.

Three minutes later, I was admitted to a triage room. All I wanted, at this point, was some pain medication so that I could sleep. A nurse showed up within five minutes to insert an iv, for hydration and pain medication, and to take a blood sample. All the nurses and doctors popping in and out of the room were cheerful and pleasant, many of them with unhurried, twangy Southern drawls.

For a while, I just dozed, blissful in the absence of pain, and so, so tired. My father came to sit with me after a few hours had gone by, so that my husband could leave to daven and eat breakfast.

About four hours after I had been admitted, Dr. Kapoor walked in. He had an ear-to-ear grin while he greeted me, so I assumed the news wasn't too dire.

"Well, Mandy," he said. "You are very, very sick." At first I thought he was joking, because he didn't look serious at all. Then I realized that a doctor most likely wouldn't joke about something like this. I had also clearly spelled my name as 'Malka' when I was admitted, but to my utter bafflement they continued referring to me as Mandy for the duration of my stay. At first I was too woozy to correct them, and then I just didn't care.

"You have acute pancreatits," he said. "Your liver and pancreas numbers are extremely elevated, to ten times the normal amount."

I just stared at him. Well, that explained the paroxysms of pain all night long. "You need a tune-up," he concluded cheerfully. "We'll take care of you."

After a while, I was given a room on the fifth floor. It had a beautiful view of palm trees, bright blue sky and dazzling sun, all of which I could experience only through a glass window that didn't open.

I slept while nurses bustled in and out. They brought me ice packs to keep against my stomach in case the medication wore off. But they made sure my IV drip had a steady supply of painkillers. I hadn't nursed my baby in over six hours at this point, and because I was worried about my milk supply dropping, my husband bought me a pump. I managed to pump for only a few minutes on each side. All I wanted was sleep, and in addition to being hooked up to an IV, small discs were stuck onto my chest to monitor my heart rate, all of which made it difficult to maneuver the pump.

I missed my baby and kept asking to see her, but it was difficult to find a time when we were both awake and interested in company. When my husband brought her to visit me the next day, she turned away from me and cried when I held her, refusing contact.

I felt like crying, too. She was only five months old, but apparently that was old enough to realize I'd abandoned her. My baby's rejection cut through me, and there was no medication strong enough to smooth that pain away.

The doctors told me I would need an MRI to see if there were any gallstones still stuck in any of the ducts. If there were, I would need an endoscopy to remove them. An endoscopy would involve sticking a tube down my throat, and would mean I would need to stay in the hospital a few extra days. If they didn't see any gallstones, I would be able to leave within the next two days, as soon as my numbers were back to normal. Meanwhile, they put me on a diet of pure IV just in case. They didn't want me to drink or eat, so that my pancreas could rest and recover. They also wanted my stomach empty in case they would need to do an endoscopy or emergency gallbladder surgery.

I davened that they wouldn't find gallstones in any of the ducts, and then stopped worrying about it, trusting in Hashem to take care of the rest. I asked if I could have some ice, because my mouth was very dry. Psychologically and emotionally, there is a strong need to eat and drink, neither of which I was doing. Chewing the ice helped to alleviate that need a little. I also secretly let it melt and drank it, desperate for the sensation of swallowing fluids and confident that Hashem was watching over me and I would not need to have surgery in this hospital. Whenever the nurses changed shifts I asked for ice, because no nurse would give it to me twice, as the instructions on the whiteboard indicated I shouldn't be eating or drinking.

I was kept on this diet of intravenous fluids, water, and ice for the better part of four days. I lost five pounds and my milk supply plummeted, which worried me. I couldn't nurse due to the medication I was receiving, and was often too tired to pump, which wasn't helping matters.

Wednesday, they transported me to the room with the MRI machine. They had switched me to a different medication that day and I was reacting badly to it, feeling lightheaded and off-balance.

The technician asked me if I was claustrophobic, and then told me to take off my watch, glasses and any other metal items I was wearing. Without my glasses, the room was a colorful blur, which didn't help with my dizziness.

I scooted onto the MRI table and settled back on the pillow the tech placed beneath my head. My arms and legs were restrained with cuffs, because the tech explained that I needed to stay absolutely still. Then the table slid inside the machine, and I was buried alive.

Though I am not prone to claustrophobia, there is something frightening and coffin-like about being enclosed on five sides, with white plastic just inches away from you in every direction but one. There were lights on inside the machine, and the tech's voice came on over a speaker. He assured me that he could see and hear me and if there was anything I needed all I had to do was ask.

I craned my head backwards and caught a glimpse of the room outside the "coffin" which calmed me down immensely, and then closed my eyes. I was ready to begin. He told me to keep very still, and then over and over, to take a deep breath and hold it until he told me to release it. The machine clicked and whirred and my wedding ring, which I'd forgotten to take off, vibrated.

I raised my hand and scratched my nose, then remembered that I wasn't supposed to move. Wondering why the tech hadn't said anything while I moved, I remembered that my hands were restrained, with cuffs around my wrists. I had, apparently, hallucinated scratching my nose, most likely due to all the pain medication I was on.

The doctor came by later on, jovial as he pressed against my abdomen, checking for swelling. "Looks like you're getting better!" he said brightly. "Do you feel better?"

"Yes, I really do," I told him. "When can I go home?"

"Well, the good news is," he said, "that according to the MRI, the gallstones have passed, so you don't need an endoscopy. That means you can leave tomorrow.

"However," he continued. "You still need surgery as soon as possible. Pancreatitis is no small matter, and you were lucky this time. I realize you would rather have the surgery back home in New York, but please promise me you'll schedule the surgery as soon as you get back."

I promised, thanked him for everything, and then sent out a family-wide text: "No endoscopy necessary, coming home tomorrow!"

----

Back in New York, I felt absolutely fine again. But I'd learned my lesson this time, and wasted no time in making an appointment at Dr. Brown, a competent surgeon. What if I was pregnant the next time I had an attack that required emergency hospitalization, and perhaps surgery? I didn't want to take that risk.

I was the youngest person in the waiting room by about forty years. Dr. Brown had a friendly yet professional demeanor as he listened while I told him my medical history and gave him the files. He was surprised that someone so young would need to have gallbladder surgery, but after flicking through the stack of files I had brought with me from Aventura hospital, he raised his eyebrows. "Wow," he said. "You were REALLY sick."

"Yes, I know," I deadpanned. "That's why I'm here."

I made an appointment for an outpatient surgery at the hospital the following week.

We had to wake up at 6 a.m. in order to get to the hospital by 8. My baby, who had b"h gone back to nursing beautifully, was confused and a little grumpy with the dawn visit to Zaidy and Bobby's house.

It felt strange to walk into the hospital, feeling totally fine, but knowing I was about to go under the knife. I was nervous, alternately davening and joking with my husband to alleviate my nerves. In the waiting room, we filled out forms and my husband was given a monitor that would buzz and light up when I was out of surgery. Then it was time to get ready.

I was led to a small room where I changed into a hospital gown. The nurses were nice and competent. One offered me an extra cap so that all my hair would be totally covered, as the caps were a little thin and transparent. Another drew some blood, painlessly and quickly inserting the needle. I paced the room and noticed I was leaking milk. Idly, I wondered what happened in the sterile environment of an operating room when a nursing mother began leaking milk.

A nurse knocked on the door. "Follow me up to the operating floor," she said. Then she nodded in my husband's direction. "He can't come with you."

I thought my husband would stay with me right up until I was led into the operating room, but apparently this wasn't the case, and the unexpected parting left me off-balance as I was led to the elevators. I exchanged "what are you in for" chitchat with another patient as we rode up to the operating floor.

The nurse showed me to a bed and told me to get into it. I sat quietly for a few minutes, trying not to think of anything at all. Then six jovial interns suddenly crowded around me. "Okay," piped an apple-cheeked brunette, who was wearing bright purple scrubs, "it's time to put the IV in. Don't worry, this won't hurt a bit."

But it did hurt, because none of them knew what they were doing. They poked me once, twice, three times. In the crook of my elbow, on my other arm, on the back of my hand. I had never experienced something like this. The needle hurt going in, and when they managed to find a vein, they just pricked it so it bled beneath the skin. At this point I got frustrated with their lack of competency and experience and demanded a real nurse or doctor, though I tried to stay polite, figuring that these interns would probably be helping out while I was unconscious in surgery as well.

They said I had small, hard to find veins and I pointed out that a nurse had effortlessly drawn blood just minutes before. Oh, so in that case, the veins were swollen, they told me, shrugging, and insisted that no one else was able to insert the IV. They just pricked me again and again, taking turns, until they finally hit a vein in my wrist. I sent up a silent prayer that their job in the operating room would be limited to handing over instruments. Then I sent up another silent prayer that they shouldn't be as inept with handling instruments as they were with inserting the IV.

"Oh, no, we're late," exclaimed one and they ran with me to the operating room. I noticed some blood was leaking into the IV line and pointed it out, but they assured me it was fine.

I was glad to see the surgeon in the operating room. He greeted me cheerfully, and then began ordering around the interns. The room felt like a walk in freezer and I began shivering uncontrollably.

"Um," said an intern, "are you, um, cold or just nervous?"

"I'm cold," I replied, and was thankful when they piled several blankets onto my legs.

I heard some doctors talking, just out of my line of vision, instructing the interns about how to stick the tube down my throat. "Don't worry," he added in my direction. "We do that after you're asleep and we'll take it out before you wake up." Then they placed a mask over my mouth and instructed me to breathe deeply.

Nothing happened. The doctor let out an impatient breath and showed the intern that if the mask didn't form a complete seal over my face, I wouldn't breathe in enough of the gas to fall asleep. My last thought before I fell asleep was at least someone else noticed that the interns were incompetent.

----

"Hi, hello. The surgery's over. We're all done!" The voices in the room seemed muted, and I could barely see without my glasses. "Do you think you could scoot over here on your own?" someone asked.

I turned my head and saw a stretcher right next to the operating table. Seriously? They expected me to get up? I was still woozy from the anesthesia and it took a ton of effort just to move my head.

"That's okay," someone said, and at the count of three, they lifted the sheet I was lying on and placed me onto the stretcher. Finally, the six interns had done something right.

I was wheeled into the recovery ward, where a nurse handed me some crackers, apple juice and advil. My surgeon stopped by, smiling, and assured me that the surgery had gone well and I had no need to worry about gallbladder attacks ever again. I thanked him and off he went to the next surgery. The nurse hovered over me until I chewed and swallowed, and then bustled away. I laid there for about fifteen minutes, and then the nurse came back and told me I would have to get out of the bed and into a wheelchair.

It took some maneuvering, because my abdomen felt tender and sore, but I managed to slowly get in and settled into a seated position with a sigh of relief. The nurse wheeled me to a different ward, separated by curtains with lots of outpatients recovering. "Is anyone here with you?" she asked, and it occurred to me that I had forgotten all about my husband, who was probably still worrying for nothing even though I had been out of surgery for 45 minutes already. The nurse assured me she would tell him right away and made good on her promise. I dozed and five minutes later, my husband was there.

I felt very out of sorts, woozy and tired, and told my husband I wanted a half hour just to sleep. I asked a nurse to remove my IV meanwhile, but she refused, telling me she would only do so if I was ready to leave. Finally, I decided I'd rather rest at home than in the outpatient wing of the busy hospital, so I slowly got dressed and shuffled gingerly out of the hospital. My abdomen was sensitive and sore, but the pain was a mere blip compared to the pain of a gallbladder attack, or the pancreatitis I had experienced. I sent a quiet prayer up to Hashem, thanking Him that the surgery had gone well and I could finally, completely put the whole thing behind me.