Hello, everyone. I’m still alive.
Thank you to everyone who emailed Mod R to check on me. I’ve written a long detailed post of woe about my gallbladder ordeal, but I just trashed it, because it was depressing, and who wants that?
I don’t give medical advice, because I’m not a medical professional, so here is a datapoint. If you have unexplained severe pain in the upper abdomen, especially after you eat fatty meals, have your gallbladder checked. Especially if you recently lost weight, as weight loss can accelerate formation of gallstones.
When they put me on Ozempic for blood sugar control, I expected to lose some weight as a consequence. And I did. I came off Ozempic just before the attacks started. I’ve lost 31 lbs. to date. 18 of it was Ozempic. The rest was gallbladder. The pain is excruciating, and it gets worse, not better. I got to the point where I was afraid to eat. If the surgeon had told me, “We’ll have to cut off one of your feet for the pain to stop,” I would’ve told him to pick one.
I’m recovering. I saw my primary yesterday, and the incisions are healing well. They gave me oxycodone in the hospital, which I took for two days. I haven’t taken any painkillers since last Saturday. I walked 3 times a day for 15 minutes, even if it was just around the house or back yard, since the day of surgery, so my gas pain was tolerable.
I won’t lie, there were a couple of days there where I wasn’t myself because I irrationally worried about my pain coming back. But I climbed out of that hole. I still get pain twinges, but it’s nothing like it was. It pinches and lets go. I do have other weird pains here and there. Like something is hurting in my right side just above the hip. Feels like a pulled muscle or something, hurts when I inhale deeply, but right now I’m hypersensitive to every twitch. The main thing is, it’s been 8 days. I am not bent over crying.
Things I have tried to eat: a few bites of lean steak, a few bites of pot roast, a small serving of mushroom ravioli with a little marinara sauce and ground chicken breast. Mostly I eat saltines and chicken broth. Also pears and apples. Oatmeal.
But yesterday, after visiting the primary and giving blood – my liver enzymes were again sky high during the hospital stay, so she wants to recheck – Gordon took me out for sushi. It was a beautiful day. We sat outside. I ordered $15 worth of sushi making sure there was zero mayo or sauce on it. I ate 6 pieces and almost fell asleep at the table. I ate the rest for dinner and still have some left.
I get tired very easily now. I am back to work but only able to work in short bursts. I have a lot of brain fog and the concentration is just not there. It’s frustrating, but there is no cure except time. I’m deliriously happy with the pain being gone, and the hospital took good care of me. I sent the ER and OBS thank you baskets. Apparently, not a lot of people do this, because I received a puzzled call from the hospital today, making sure that I meant to send the baskets to the staff.
And now onto much funner news. Sanctuary is available for preorder in ebook. Behold the Black Volhv.
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Ilona Andrews comes a novella featuring Roman, our favorite Volhv wizard in the always intriguing, colorful, volatile Kate Daniels world.
It’s not easy serving Chernobog, the God of Destruction, Darkness and Death… especially during the holidays; and especially when you’re out of eggnog and one of your pesky, freeloading mythic creatures has eaten your last cookie.
Roman would like nothing more than to be left alone, but when a wounded boy stumbles into his yard and begs for sanctuary, Roman takes him in. Now, elite mercenaries are camped out on his property, combat mages are dousing the house with fire, and strange priests are unleashing arcane magic. They thought Roman was easy pickings, just a hermit in the woods, but they chose the wrong dark priest to annoy. For while Roman might be patient, he is the Black Volhv, filled with the love of his terrible god. For his adversaries, it’s a fight to the death, but for him, it’s just another day in the neighborhood.
Preorder:
Remember, today is your last day to read the serial for free, and then it is going to come off the site for edits. Front page is updated, and the countdown timer is up.
Hooray preorder!!! Done!
Glad you are mending Ilona
I’m so sorry you had to go through that and it’s great you’re doing so much better. I hope you find your best path to a full recovery.
Sending out energy/prayer to manifest healing for you. 🙏
Glad you are getting better! Take care of yourself and get well soon!
Preordered yesterday. Will try to squeeze one last full read in today, as if I don’t already have passages memorized.
So very glad you are healing well!!
Glad you are able to feel some relief with the surgery.
I have to admit I thought of Mister Rogers when I read that last line. “For his adversaries, it’s a fight to the death, but for him, it’s just another day in the neighborhood.” I envisioned Roman with a nice little cardigan and tennis shoes for a minute. So excited for it’s release!
Original line was “another day in Nav” but it was agreed by all that most people wouldn’t get the reference. 🙂
I’m sure those that do get it will be clamoring for coffee mugs and other assorted items with “another day in Nav” on it. 😁
These mugs should have a lovely knitted sweater on it as well 🙂
That will be arranged. We are planning to open the store for this release. 🙂
Yea!
Woop-woop! 🎉
I was hit by a car several years ago and had to have my shoulder reconstructed. The surgeon did a great job and was very nice to me, so a couple of weeks after the surgery I took flowers to his office with a thank you card.They were stunned, which made me wonder about people. Why WOULDN’T you thank a person who fixed you?
However, I am now embarrassed that I didn’t think of the emergency room people, who were also wonderful.
So wonderful to hear that you are recovering. Being kind to yourself and taking time is hard but best. 💜
Also preorder has been preordered! Can’t wait!
I have had several surgeries and the brain fog seems to be a side effect of the anesthetic. Walking definitely helps with gas. My gall bladder surgery was 40 years ago so it was not laparoscopic and gas pains were not fun. I was told that depending on the person and the surgery it takes roughly 6 weeks for your body to shake off the anesthesia
Good luck with healing and reintroducing food.
I can believe that. I had the appendix out in my mid-20s, and it was probably 10+ days before it felt like the body was connected to the head properly. Before, it seemed like there was a bit of a lag. Did dreadful things to the balancing act!
Im not a doctor, but the 3 times I’ve had general anesthesia, I’ve been told it can take as long as 6 months to completly clear from your brain. So hang in there with the brain fog and tiredness. Itll get better with time. Stay hydrated. sending good thoughts.
So now I’m curious between general anesthesia and what’s-it-called, waking anesthesia? I had the latter when I had a colonoscopy at the hospital. Came out of it with no residual effects and no brain fog, other than, “didn’t I just go to sleep? Are you done already?”. I’m guessing maybe you can’t use that version for longer surgeries??
it’s called moderate sedation. you are responsive and follow commands during the procedure. you don’t stop breathing on your own. we use it a lot for diagnostic procedures that are uncomfortable but don’t require the patient to be completely immobile. Major abdominal surgery is better under general anesthesia because you don’t want the patient suddenly coughing or moving when in there doing delicate work.
source: self, as a respiratory therapist with 25 years of hospital experience
Ah, I didn’t realize the general anesthesia also kept you from moving that much.
Thanks for the info.
I take a looong time to recover from general anesthesia. I just have to know that going in. Having said that, I don’t remember gas pain from my surgery. I’ve either blocked it, just got lucky, or filed it with the excruciating pain beforehand.
So very happy you are recovering well!
Please be sure to take of yourself first – the rest can w**t. ::hugs::
Pre ordered!
So happy to hear you are feeling better Ilona! Having had my own gallbladder removed years ago, I totally understand where you are now. It was a major surgery and it just takes a little while for you to get your energy back and also to be able to eat pretty much normally all of the time.
If you get frustrated with being tired (etc) just remind yourself that you are now rid of the awful, painful attacks permanently! But don’t worry, you’ll get there. Keep doing what you’re doing, you’re doing great.
P.S.: Sanctuary preordered. 😁
Be kind to yourself, it takes time to heal. Preorder done!!
Thank you for the beautiful cover & the pre-order – I CLICKED SO FAST.
I hope you continue to feel a bit better. Being sick and in pain is so hard.
hope your recovery goes well! pre ordered my copy!
Ebook ordered! So sorry you had that route with your gallbladder. I had the same ER version and actually pushed the doctor away when he pressed my side. Like you said, time and rest, feel better!
yay!! I pre-ordered yesterday.
I love how we get a great cover that covers Everything Roman, while allowing us to visualize his face. Man off Mystery, heh!
Sending best wishes for a good recovery. I am so sorry you had to go through rhat.
Sending lots of healing vibe. Glad to have you back, but want you to be happy and rested. Mod R has been keeping us entertained (🥳🤪)
Will pre order later. Happy Friday To all the BDH. 😍
You lost an organ, a part of your body, take the time to heal even when it doesn’t hurt. I’ve had 2 organs removed and I pushed myself too hard after the gallbladder (I was changing schools and had to set up my classroom) do not do that.
Also anaesthesia makes me loopy for months. Certain types anyway. My last 2 kidbey stones I wasn’t loopy after but I had to go on oxygen for a couple of weeks. Still can’t decide which is worse.
Love to you and your family.
Ilona, I’m glad that you’re feeling better despite some twinges of pain, and hopefully the elevated liver enzymes don’t indicate anything serious.
Also, I love the cover of Sanctuary.
That sounds like a heck of an ordeal, Ilona. I’m so glad the pain situation has improved and you’re on the mend. Sending you lots of love and good healing vibes!
Glad you’re on the mend. Healing can be hella frustrating but Healthy Ilona is the Best Ilona so please take it easy.
Preordered!! And will get print and audio when available ❤️.
I have never missed my gallbladder. Happy you are recovering. Tip: research liver friendly foods and start moving your diet to those foods and your enzymes will be happier. After years of erratic enzyme numbers, I had to start a medication toxic to liver. As a result, I now eat liver friendly 98% of my diet and my liver enzymes stay consistently in normal ranges.
Good luck and thank you for sharing your creativity and imagination with us ❤️
So glad you are recovering. While I’m not a medical professional I did work in hospitals for 34 years. Had lots of lunches with surgeons and anesthesiologists and the one thing they all pretty much agreed on was that surgery was traumatic. Like a car accident traumatic. No matter how good they were or how hard they tried to mitigate the trauma they were still cutting into a body and oftentimes taking something out of it and that causes trauma that your body must heal and recover from. So just be kind to yourself and your body. It’s healing trauma. 😊
The body is a mystery and unique unto itself – so everyone’s recovery is different. Be gentle, take your time, I feel like we think modern medicine (which is AMAZING) equals speedier recovery. But, that’s not been my experience. Removing an organ and smooshing all your parts around and infusing your system with narcotics has long-lasting ripper cushions. 😉
I had emergency gallbladder surgery about six years ago. No warning signs, then BOOM please-let-me-die levels of pain that laughed at morphine. Because there were no preexisting issues, they didn’t think it was my GB, so they admitted me to the hospital and ran every test possible for almost a week. By the time the finally stopped seeing zebras and realized it was a horse, it had gone necrotic and was stuck to my pancreas and liver.
The surgery was so gross, it was talked about in the locker room and other surgeons stopped by to tell me how gross it was. I can’t imagine what could impress people at a large hospital who have seen so much, but my GB did it. Had to stay for a week after because of sepsis. Worst two weeks.
Recovery is so HARD. All I wanted to eat for a month was an apple and the occasional smoothie. The brain fog is real. The right side pain still happens (in fact it hurts now), but I think it is scar tissue – if I’m not careful doing ab work, it lets me know. I couldn’t eat any raw leafy greens for years or I’d get murder stabbing pains. After slowly reintroducing raw veggies, I can finally eat small amounts of salad.
I hope that once the large part of your recovery is done you will feel 100 times better. Take care, and let your family pamper you. <3
Thank you!
Pre-ordered it.
Can’t wait to pre-order the print copy when it’s available.
I know it’s my paranoia but I live in dread of there being an EMP event in case of international conflict and losing my entire ebook collection without Hard copies stashed away somewhere.
Hope you continue to get better. Don’t push yourself too hard. Take the time to heal.
None of us want you to rush that much that you end up hurting yourself more.
Have a great day today and a wonderful weekend!
Oh lord! Yet another thing I never worried about. And now, I need to add it to my list along with Earth’s magnetic core flipping, Yellowstone blasting, earthquakes (now that I know the North American eastern underground stuff will let shakes travel further), WordPerfect disappearing, no bottles of wine in the Cantina on a bad day, and my grocery store changing where it puts the dang stuff.
Depending on the day, all are equally scary.
+1!!!
All my fears right there – except I’m on the pacific ring of fire, not the East Coast.
Choosing print books!
Hey Ilona,
It’s wonderful to hear that you are doing so well! I remember the brain fog from my surgery, the Versed used to keep me under seemed to linger for weeks afterwards. It pains me to admit that I felt stupid from the meds, I couldn’t process simple everyday stuff without concentrating really hard. ‘The dumbs’ were as exhausting as the physical recovery. No one warned me that I’d experience weird aches and random pain afterwards either, that made it scary because, who expects that?.
The brain fog cleared up faster when I was able to drink cranberry juice. Apparently the military discovered cranberry’s ability to clear some chemicals from the body during warfare/interrigations. 100% Cranberry juice had a strong positive impact and it helped ‘erase the dumb’ from my brain. I started with small sips here n’ there and worked my way up to 3 glasses a day.
Arnica Montana Cream helped with the pain and bruising at my surgical site. The stuff is a Med-Mages Magic Cream. Ice packs are nice too.
Thank you for the update! Please continue to take good care of yourself we’ve been praying for your well-being and for your family’s too.
PS You’re a hella-of-a-warrior soldering on and writing a book through all of that -kudos!
Pre-ordered! Thank you for this story.
Yay for Roman! Glad you are feeling better and hopefully the random pains calm down soon.
I feel for you. Hang in there. I had my gallbladder out 7 years ago, and it took me weeks to get past it. I gave up on oxycodone after the first day. I don’t like the side effects and the pain was manageable without it. I lived on yogurt and cream of wheat for the first week or so while waiting for my digestive tract to start working again.
Just FYI, the Order Now and Excerpt links on the landing page take you to Magic Claims.
Thanks for letting us know, we’ll edit now 🙂
I am glad you are getting better. I think the story about the confusion of hospital staff about the appreciation baskets is funny and sad at the same time. Sad because more people don’t show appreciation to the staff who take care of them. Funny because I was thinking of the conversation at the hospital that resulted in someone calling clarification, it must have been an interesting one LOL. Looking forward to the novella being released and seeing how it ends. Its been a fun couple of months seeing the story develop slowly every week.
Glad and grateful to hear you are recovering. Hope you mend a little more each day. My pre-order is complete and now comes the w*it.
Well, I got to your blog and noticed the pre-order link, so I went to Amazon and took care of that business. July 30 – I will be increasingly hopping up and down excited as the date gets closer.
I’m glad you’re recovering – at about the rate my friend has been. She had her gall bladder out only a couple of weeks before you did. She, also, is deliriously happy about the pain being gone.
Take good care of yourself – the BDH will settle for nothing less.
Happy to hear you are on the mend.Best wishes for a full recovery.
Thankful you are healing well….
Off to pre-order!!!
Shut up and take my money!!!!
Glad to hear the surgery went well. Please take time to heal and recover.
I love that cover art. So perfect! Especially the staff with the birds head on top. Reminds me of Kate’s first introduction to him. Now I’ll go get that pre-order taken care of . . .
So glad you like it ☺️
I rarely comment, but I must applaud all for that phenomenal cover art! Wow! Just WOW! I hope that art with most any Roman quote can be on a t-shirt and a hoodie! Mod R, please add to merch list. 🙂
Also, Ilona, glad you are feeling better, but make sure you take time to heal. We, the BDH, will w*it.
“W*it”!!!! Yikes!!!! You are using the Bad Four Letter Word.
Done. Very excited.
My son had his appendix removed and in addition to an anesthetic, a paralytic was used so his abdominal muscles and such would stay still. The pain from that was very bad and took several days to wear off. That might be some of what you are experiencing, especially the pulled muscle sensation, which is how my son described it.
Another member of the BDH who jumped on the preorder! 😀
Good to know you are recovering. Slow and steady is annoying but for the best.
Of course, like a very good member of the BDH, just pre-ordered.
I hope the Pre-Orders helps you feel better and get better faster (not that fast matters when pain is gone — yay!).
And lovely cover with the K Staff (as usual, I can’t remember its name).
Klyuv! It just means Beaky 🤭
😘 (hope it shows up – kissy emoji)
(I am a Boomer so since I discovered them, I like to use them,)
Glad you’re feeling better and hope you have a speedy recovery. I will be ordering Roman’s book as soon as I get home. I’m in the office and I almost said, “Hot damn!” out loud when I saw the book cover and the pre-order links.
I am so sorry that you have been in such pain! Hugs to you.
Oatmeal is awesome stuff. I haven’t had gallbladder problems, but I puked my way through 6 pregnancies though, while desperately trying to NOT lose weight, for my baby’s sakes. Another thing which always sat well and is along the same lines was sprouted wheat, which I sprouted myself.
I am glad that sushi sat well. It is good for you.
I wish you quick healing with zero recurrence.
I love the cover. kluyv reminds me a bit of the old Mary Poppin’s umbrella (one of my favorite movies as a kid and that bird had sass so not a bad thing!)
glad you’re recovering. I agree about it being really hard to write anything not terribly depressing about a traumatic medical experience on the first pass. at least for me I need to leak some angst before I can communicate from somewhere besides the sea of despair.
The weird pains in random places is caused by gas..No not farty gas. when they remove that gallbladder, they poke holes in you and pump you up with gas like a balloon. when they ar e done, they deflate you. Your body doesn’t like changing shape like that. Plus you have some retained gas that will ever so slowly go away. Oh, and watch for the fun gastric dumping. I hope you don’t have it for very long, but a very small part of the population will have that long term. Let’s just say that if I am constipated, I don’t reach for Colace. I reach for the bacon. Nuf said about that!
Eat at least a little bit at least three times a day after, It should help. After the surgery, If my wife skips a meal entirely it has negative side effects. But just a single banana or oatmeal bar is enough to keep things normal-ish.
So glad you are on the mend and feeling better. Enjoy the time and break to heal. Thanks for all you do and for your wicked sense of humor. I love that. 😉😀
Preordered, check!
Please take it easy. I had the outpatient gallbladder removal when my son was a preschooler. It was still a lot of pain and not pleasant, and I can’t imagine the full op version.
We appreciate your patience, kindness and updates (depressing or not) and probably owe you a basket of flowers, too. We will lean on the important lesson of waiting.
Oops- didn’t mean to paste the url. Please disregard.
Fixed 🙂
It’s so good to hear you are doing better. I am sure the twinges will get better w/ time and healing.
Kudos to Gordon for helping and insisting on smart choices.
Take care of yourself first, then worry about the BDH. We are not going anywhere any time soon.
Thanks for the link to “Sanctuary”. I am embarrassed to admit that I did the preorder before I read the post.
So glad you’re feeling better. My mom went through this several years ago. The change was amazing but the recovery had its own issues.
Super happy to order Sanctuary! Stats looking darn good at Kobo for just one day of availability:
#1 in Romance, Paranormal
#4 in Romance, Science Fiction & Fantasy
#5 in Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fantasy
I’m ready for July. It’s going to be mine, mine I tell you. Only time I want it to be humid and 100 so I’ll have an excuse to sit in my ac and devote myself to the Black Vlod. I’m Catholic so then I’ll have to go to confession after reading the book. The drama of it all.
So happy you’re on your road to recovery. Don’t push too hard. There is to be no backsliding. You’ve scared the Horde way too much as it is.