Randomly started throwing up about a year and a half ago. First time didn't think too much of it. 2nd time 3 weeks later it was so bad I couldn't even keep water down, went to a doc in the box and they said better go get your appendix checked at the ER just in case even though I had no abdominal pain. Went to the ER, they did an MRI and some blood work, said don't see any issues, probably just food poisoning and prescribed me an anti nausea medicine. 3rd time about another 3 weeks later called my dr and asked about back to back food poisoning and she told me there was a listeria outbreak and to keep taking my ER medicine. 4th time 2 weeks after that I was in the middle of the El Paso desert and just figured I was really dehydrated.

2 weeks after that I got back home from the middle of nowhere El Paso on Friday, Saturday evening I started throwing up again. By Sunday I had mild muscle soreness but no distinct pain or fever but I was sick of it. Went back to the ER, they did more blood work said they didn't see anything, ended up with a sonogram and the found gall stones but no sign of infection. The ER doctor came in and said it was possible one of the smaller stones was intermittently blocking the duct and it was causing me to throw up until it popped back free. Also that any other time in her 15+ years of being an ER doctor she'd tell me to go home and schedule a follow up with my PCP and see if it would be worth having my gallbladder taken out electively to prevent that from happening BUT this was during the 3rd wave of COVID outbreaks and she said for the first time in 6 months she had 3 beds available so if I was willing to go ahead with the surgery she'd grab one of the ones in the trauma ward for me and I could have it out as day surgery in the morning, but I'd have to stay the night or there'd be no guarantee I'd still have the spot in the morning.

Several family members had their gallbladders out so I figured what the hell, let's get it over with and agreed. They took me upstairs, gave me a general round of antibiotics for a typical surgery and ran more blood work. At 9am they took me downstairs for 10am surgery. The plan was to take about 60-90 min and check out of the hospital by 2pm. At 4pm I wake up my hospital room, with IV's in both arms, and a surgeon sitting by my bedside. Not only was my gallbladder infected which didn't show up in any of the tests or the scans, it ruptured on the operating table. My 60 min day surgery turned into a 5 hour long all hands on deck with a final count of either 5 or 6 trauma surgeons playing hungry hungry hippos with my abdomen trying to get all the stones out. I spent 3 days in the hospital on high powered antibiotics before they kicked me out with a walker to go home and spend another week in bed with high powered antibiotics and pain killer because COVID numbers were up and they wanted me as far from the hospital as possible.

But I tell people if your organs are going to randomly explode, then while you're already unconscious on the operating table of a level 1 trauma center is the place for it to happen!