Gallbladder is gone!

It's done! I'm free! No more gallbladder! I can't tell you how excited I am to have this season in my life ending!
I had my surgery yesterday morning bright and early. I was at the hospital by 6:45 and put under by 7:50. I woke up exactly one hour later with four incisions and no gallbladder! (I love general anesthetic). As soon as I woke up I said to the nurse, "I'm assuming this is the recovery room? How long have I been in here?". She replied, "Yes, it is, and you've been here for about 10 minutes.". I then complimented her on the nice Christmas decor over the nurse's station. Now was about the time that she was supposed to be asking me questions like, "what's your name?" and, "do you know what day it is?" but when she saw my last name she asked if I knew someone,who happened to be Matt's aunt, and her coworker. I started explaining the relationship and said that it was a pity she wasn't in that day, but my mom who worked on Peds would pop in to see me that day. Apparently they decided that they didn't need to ask me anymore questions, so they let me go back to sleep for a bit. I woke up once more in the recovery room and asked how my surgery went. They were pretty vague but it seemed like everything had gone as planned. They then wheeled me over to the day surgery room at 9:17, just in time for my mom to pop in and check on me! I was still tired from the anesthetic so I slept a bit more that morning, but when my mom came back at 10:30 to chat I was more than ready for it. I had been pretty worried about how the anesthetic would hit me, but luckily it wore off pretty quick and I didn't have any nausea from it. I also didn't have to have much in the way of pain killers. I was given some morphine before I woke up, but I didn't even need to take the standard T3 prescription they had planned on giving me. The nurses were impressed at how well I was able to walk on my own and even though I wasn't discharged until 12:00, I would have been out sooner had there been someone available to discharge me.
Back at home I was able to get a bit more sleep and spent the rest of the day hanging out with the family and doing little things here and there around the house. It felt good to be up.
Because I didn't have any nausea I was able to try eating some things that I hadn't had in months - I had popcorn for the first time in a couple months, low-fat margarine for the first time in 4 months, and red meat for the first time in almost 6 months!
The most pain I've been having is in my shoulder - during the procedure they put a tube down my throat and pumped a bunch of CO2 into my stomach to balloon it up so that it was easier to move around inside, however, they don't usually get all the gas out so my body has been absorbing it and it tends to pool in your shoulders, which feels like gas cramps but sometimes can be quite sharp. Heat packs and tylenol help fortunately!
I'm looking forward to tomorrow when I can take off my bandages and run some warm water over my incisions.
I'm just excited it's all done! Finally I feel like I can focus on bigger things now!

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)