Full Disclosure: Fulltiming Is Not All Unicorns and Rainbows

 

Okay folks, this is a departure from my normal lauding of fulltiming life.  We've had a bit of unpleasantness that life can bestow.  Beginning in April, while still in the Austin, TX area, Cyndee was struck with some serious gastrointestinal distress.  Long story short, her problem was traced to difficulties with her gallbladder.  It was either hyperactivity, blockage or stones or any of a number of other things that interrupts the normal flow of bile.

Fine, we're in a great place medical services wise.  We'll do the Dr. visits, sonograms, X-rays and whatever in the three weeks remaining before we had to depart for our Utah summer gig.  Wrong!  Couldn't get an appointment for a Dr or any imaging service.  When they tried to get us set up for four or five weeks out for the first appointment we would tell them about having to leave in three weeks.  Upon learning that they simply declined to complete the diagnosis or provide treatment.  We were cast adrift, medically speaking.

I'm not going to go into details of the symptoms but suffice it to say that if Cyndee ate anything other than dry cereal, crackers and water, she better be within five feet of a bathroom within twenty-five minutes of eating something other than the aforementioned.  Every day was an exercise in logistics- timing of eating, knowing the location of every bathroom on our route and having lots and lots of Imodium on hand.

Everything I have written about in the last few posts; all the ancient dwellings in New Mexico, Durango, Silverton, Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, etc., etc. has had the logistics thing being an ever-present component of each day.  But that was okay, we could manage that and carry on.  What was not okay was that Cyndee was miserable sick.

 Fast forward to the end of May.  We are in place for our summer gig and the search is on for medical services.  The closest being an hour away in the small town of Vernal, UT.  The worst case would be Salt Lake City, four hours away.  Having continued to study Cyndee's symptoms we decided that she would probably need a surgeon that could do the procedure (remove the gallbladder) by laparoscopy.  Yeah, we know, self-diagnosis is a fools game.  But we had such rock-solid tracking of symptoms and reactions to certain types of food that there was little chance of there being another solution.

I have to give Cyndee a lot of credit.  Sick as she was she did not get in a hurry to find a doctor and "get it over with".  She studied and she researched and she asked local folks about their experiences around the area.  She spent until the middle of June before picking a surgeon to call for an appointment.  And totally opposite our experience in Texas, they could see her faster than we could get there.  Cyndee actually had to ask them to move the appointment out a couple of days.  The hospital and surgeon were in Roosevelt, UT, an hour-and-a-half away and we had work days between now and then.  Not convenient but not bad either.

What a great bunch of people to work with.  Getting in to see the doctor was low effort, paperwork-wise, and everybody we saw, reception, admin, nurses and the doctor himself were a breath of fresh air.  They were definitely pros but there wasn't a surly one or "robot" in the bunch.  The doctor listened to all the history Cyndee had accumulated since April, did an exam and scheduled her for bloodwork and an ultrasound, that same day!

A few days later the results of the ultrasound came in and sure enough there were stones in the gallbladder.  It didn't look bad enough to be the sole reason for Cyndee's severe symptoms but the doctor speculated that there may be "irritation" from the stones that are amplifying her discomfort. Surgery was scheduled for July 5th, first working day after the holiday.

Cyndee was to be first up on the 5th.  We had to be at the hospital, going through admissions by 7:00am.  Given that it was an hour-and-a-half drive from our location, ten miles of which were coming down a mountain with 8% grades and hairpin switchbacks and that we would have to be driving in the wee-hours of the A.M. with mule deer, elk, moose and black angus cows on the road, we chose to go down the evening before, in daylight, and get a hotel five minutes from the hospital.

The surgery went fast, 25 minutes at the most.  Elapsed time from us walking in to walking out was two-and-a-half hours.  The gallbladder was sent off to the pathologist and we were told they would call us with the results in about a week.

No surprise, the small amount of stones seen on the ultrasound were confirmed.  But there was a surprise, the pathologist also reported that the gallbladder had ruptured.  So now we know why the symptoms were more severe than the ultrasound would suggest.

The doctor said it was routine for the body to take up to a month to adjust to life without a gallbladder.  That would have put Cyndee back to normal by the end of the first week of August.  The doctor also said that 1-in-5 never adjust and continue to have symptoms of one degree or another for the rest of their life.  As I write it is September and Cyndee is still battling symptoms.  She has been able to add a few items back into her diet but crackers, dry cereal and Imodium are the foundation.