Having a gallbladder can mean a lot of things. It can mean that your body is digesting fats. It can mean that your body refuses to digest anything. It can keep you healthy. It can almost (or actually) kill you. But not having a gallbladder means only one thing: You aren't digesting any of the fatty foods or oils that go into your body. What does that mean? They pass out of your body in the way that things pass through. Only faster. And sometimes that means pain, folks. It means PAIN.
When my gallbladder left me behind and went to the great big medical waste incinerator in the sky, I altered my diet. I cut out LOTS of fat. I tried my very best to avoid things that would make me sick. I started buying eggs from free-range chickens because they are low in fat and cholesterol. I switched to low or no-fat yogurt. I stopped eating chips, I cut down on butter and other spreads...and I tried my very best to make my diet healthier.
That wasn't hard, because the change in my diet was really that I added back in a lot of the foods I'd had to stop eating. Before my gallbladder surgery, I was eating bagels with low-fat strawberry cream cheese and fresh mozzarella.
Yeah. That's the end of the list. There was no other food. And yet, I survived! What a surprise.
The changes worked, and I felt good. I didn't have to go get the medicine they make to help gallbladderless folk digest fat. I was in the clear.
But this last week has involved lots of crazy. Thursday I went to Chicago, grabbing food as I went. Friday I ran to Kokomo, then I quickly made a salad and cake for Jen's reception, and I ate a few slices of pizza for dinner, because it was there. And then Saturday, I ate at Jen's reception (lots of yummy salads with creamy dressings) and then pizza in the evening at her grandma's house. And Sunday I ate leftovers at home of the first pizza and the broccoli salad. And Monday I grabbed fast food for lunch and then had pasta for dinner with a yummy creamy sauce--
And all of that translates to lots and lots of unnecessary fats in my diet.
That might explain today's horror. Or I may have eaten something today that didn't settle well. It could have been a bad batch of sweet tea. It could have been a funky yogurt, or bad melon. Heck, Drugged Out Waiter could have given me food poisoning. He could have dropped meth in with the bread. Who knows.
All I know for sure is that I was half-convinced that I should head straight to the emergency room at around 3:00. It was the worst pain ever. The kind of pain no one should ever feel.
Part of me kept wanting to check and see if someone had walked into the library and actually shot me, or perhaps left a knife lodged in my stomach, right below the last rib. Somebody could have come in to kill me, and maybe I was in shock! That was why I thought I should keep working on the teen fall brochure instead of passing out from blood loss and sheer agony! But no. No one had actually stabbed me. Not yet.
The worst part was, I'm pretty sure I did this to myself. TO MYSELF. So this is me saying: I am not letting that happen again. That might mean I drag you out of your way so I can get healthier food when we're running around having fun. And if that's the case, I am sorry. But I simply cannot go through that again.
I am feeling much better now; well enough that I came home from meeting Rachael and worked out. What I didn't do was move up to level three of 30 Day Shred. I didn't quite have that in me today.
Here's hoping tomorrow I feel even better and can move up a level. I am starting to do so well at level two, it feels like I'm cheating just because I'm not finishing my workout pleading with my television for mercy.
Why does begging Jillian Michaels to please let me die feel normal now? (I'm pretty sure that's a rhetorical question...)
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