What do you mean you’re not sure where my gall bladder is?

So a week ago I was in my hospital room eagerly pressing the doctor to discharge me. My wife was still 300 miles away and he was concerned about releasing me until she got there.

“I’ve got friends in town, Doc, who will happily pick me up and take care of me until my wife gets here!”

He smiled, then chuckled and said, “It’s so nice to actually talk to an adult!”

Seeing the puzzled look on my face, he continued, “You have to understand, most of the time I talk to people who are telling me that they don’t have anybody to pick them up or for whatever reason want to stay an extra couple days.”

I was flabbergasted. Who are these crazy people?

Let me back up a bit. A little over a week ago, my wife and I drove to Fairbanks to watch our seventh-grader compete in the last wrestling tournament of the season. It’s basically the state championships, held at Tanana Middle School every year. It was a beautiful Thursday and we enjoyed great weather all the way up. I still had energy to spare when we finally pulled into Fairbanks around 5:30 p.m. Since we had time to kill (the tournament didn’t start until the next day), we joined some good friends for dinner at Silver Gulch (in Fox, about 10 miles out of town. If you get up to Fairbanks, I highly recommend it). We said our goodbyes and headed back to the hotel for a good night’s sleep before the big weekend.

I was up at midnight. Something didn’t feel quite right. The pain in my gut kept getting worse and sleep never did come. Instead, I was pacing the hotel room until Glenny woke up to get ready for the tournament.

By then, I was ready to pass out from the pain and I finally had to say, “Babe, I think you’d best drop me off at the ER on your way to the tournament.”

She teases me all the time about my expectation that she would just drop me off, go about her business and swing back by later and check up on me. I’m funny that way; I hate to be a bother.

Anyway, blood pressure and all that was taken and the guessing game began. Right away, they focused on my “new stomach.” One year ago I had a gastrectomy wherein most of my stomach was removed. So, they figured something had gone wrong and all kinds of tests were run. No dice.

In the meantime, the pain was excruciating. My white blood cell count and liver enzymes were skyrocketing like the national deficit. Finally, after several hours, they nailed the culprit; my gall bladder had given up the ghost. OK. It happens. Just take it out, right? Not so fast. Turns out that Fairbanks was hesitant to go in because they “didn’t know my anatomy. We’re not sure where your gall bladder is.”

Huh? I’m no doctor, but I’m willing to bet it’s somewhere in here (pointing at my stomach area). Or perhaps you’re worried it slipped down one of my legs? So they called the expert in Anchorage and made tentative plans to med-flight me down. But no, the Anchorage gut guru didn’t want to touch me either for the same reason. (Who knew that gall bladders were such mysterious things?) He passed the buck down to Seattle, where I had the original surgery. Unfortunately, all the surgeons were in surgery and we would have to wait.

Oh, OK. No problem. I’ll just hang out here with poisons running around my body and two large bags of antibiotics fighting a losing battle. Finally, about 16 hours after my arrival, the call came back from Seattle. Which was a good thing, because I had gone sepsis and alarms were gonging, lights were blinking and I had enough pain killers in me to knock down a Clydesdale. Going to Seattle was out of the question; there was no time. All the docs agreed they had to go in, find the elusive gall bladder and remove it. Finally.

Woke up a few hours later with the surgeons and nurses practically high-fiving each other over its successful extraction. I’m not kidding here. I’ve never seen anything like it. Two days recovery and out I’d go. Awesome.

Day two and time to get out of bed and walk around a bit. I was chomping at the bit so I practically jumped out to run laps. Oops. I almost hit the deck and passed out again. More excited doctors and nurses. More tests found two pulmonary embolisms in my left lung. Awesome. I had heard the term before, but now I got an education on just how much these things scare doctors. So I’d need more hospital time. I sent Glenny home to take care of the kids, house, etc.

Several days in the hospital. Several days with tubes, wires and more tubes all over my body. I felt like a marionette. You can’t really move with all that stuff coming out of you. Then there’s the endless parade of nurses, CNAs, respiratory techs, phlebotomists and the occasional doctor coming in and out of your room. And each says the same thing: “Try and get some rest.” Oh, yeah. Sure thing. I’ll “rest” with the lights going on and off throughout the night, somebody coming in here every few minutes and more lines running out of my body than a 1989 Oldsmobile’s vacuum-line system.

I read once that one of the forms of torture used around the world involves putting people in a room with no windows and either leaving the light on all the time, or having it go on and off at random intervals. Apparently this messes up your internal clock and makes you punch-drunk and a little soupy after a while. I think I got a glimpse of what that’s like what with a nurse coming in, followed by a phlebotomist maybe 15 minutes later, somebody else maybe 35 or so minutes later, etc. I seriously felt I was going batty. Had I napped for an hour? Six hours? 15 minutes? I couldn’t tell.

So when the big day came when I was looking at being paroled — I mean discharged — I was giddy with excitement. I’m sure I’m being naïve, but I think I’d take prison over a hospital stay, hands down. Jokes aside, the people at Fairbanks Memorial were extremely caring and kind and I know they were doing what they had to do. Glenny stayed with me at the hospital, made runs to watch our son wrestle, then drove to Fairbanks three times (the last one a single-day round-trip run) all while taking care of the kids, doing her homework and making sure everything was functioning properly at home. Amazing doesn’t even come close to describing my wife.

But those people who actually like staying in the hospital? I don’t know who you are, but you scare me.

Ben Compton is a Palmer resident and publishes his column as “Compton’s Corner,” the same title used by his grandmother, Phyllis Compton, a longtime Frontiersman columnist.