My Gallbladder Ghosted Me (And Other Life Updates)

This episode also explores the evolution of co-parenting during holidays—moving from tears when my daughter leaves to a mature understanding that supporting her relationship with her father isn't about my feelings. I share the unexpected adventure of emergency gallbladder surgery that kept me away for weeks, complete with hospital stays and a painful recovery. From vacation fun in Vegas with magic shows and museums to sudden health crises, life continues to deliver opportunities for growth if we're willing to embrace them.

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Chapters

• 0:20 Welcome Back and Easter Reflections
• 1:43 Growth in Co-Parenting Journey
• 5:51 Vegas Vacation Adventures
• 6:52 Emergency Surgery Experience
• 9:56 Return and Podcast Updates

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Hello everyone, welcome back to Mental Health-ish. I'm glad to be back recording. It's been a while since I recorded. It is Easter tomorrow, but you might be listening to this after Easter.

Speaker 1: 0:24

So I decided to record because I think every time that a holiday comes up for me, I am just reminded of like how much growth has happened in the years before. So every year, whenever there was like any major holidays, like Easter or whatever, like years back, it would put me in my feelings so hard because I would start thinking about my own childhood and, like Easter, you know, like how I never had an Easter, I never had any Easter baskets, any Easter egg hunts, things like that, and then I would also then go further down the rabbit hole, if you will, and think about how I don't have like any family and I think I talked about this before like holidays can bring up these types of feelings for people to where, like you start kind of feeling sorry for yourself and sad and going through grief, because sometimes it makes you wish like your life would have been different or you would have had all of these memories you know, for the holidays to look back on. But this morning, when I was looking out the window and I was getting ready to go to work, I was like, oh wow, it's Easter tomorrow and I did not feel any type of way and it just like shows the growth. You know, that can happen with years, like just with time, I guess, and also therapy. But yeah, if you're someone that's feeling really bad about the holidays and they bring you some type of sadness or make you feel you know some type of way, or you get in your feelings, just know that you're not alone and it's completely. It's fine, like everything's gonna work itself out with time. It's fine, like everything's gonna work itself out with time. And yes, of course, sometimes you gotta put in the work and maybe go to therapy or talk to someone about these things so that you're able to work through all of the stuff that come up for you during the holidays. But there is light at the end of the tunnel and so I wanted to just come on and record this and hopefully give someone some hope, you know, with the holidays and things like that. But, yes, happy Easter. I hope you all had a great Easter. If you're listening to this, let me know what you did. Or if you don't celebrate Easter, let me know, let me know what Easter means to you or doesn't.

Speaker 1: 2:54

But as for me, emma left to her dad's house for the weekend and so she's actually not going to be home until night Easter night which is totally fine. Before I would have probably been sad and crying because I would have been like, oh man, I wish she was with me and I would have felt so bad. But now I'm Okay and the reason being so is that I kind of no matter what, it's not about me. I guess you could say and if you have kids you'll understand this but with the years I've kind of gotten better with like Emma going over to her dad's, like it used to make me so sad and I used to cry when she would leave, and just looking at her room, her toys, like would make me sad. And if you're a parent, you know what I'm talking about. If you're a co-parent where your kid has to leave, like it's so hard at the beginning. But I think I've gotten better at realizing that it's not about me. You know, at the end of the day, like I've always been the person that will always let Emma go to her dad's house, no matter what, like I'm not going to be the person that says no or stops it or tries to ruin her relationship with her dad. If he asks for her, I'm going to say yes. You know, especially if I'm not doing anything with Emma. Sometimes we do have plans and I'll let him know like, hey, like we're actually going to do this or I have this plan. I don't go into details, but you know I'll let him know like, oh, we have plans, or you know, I'm taking her this, so maybe next weekend. And it's always been, thankfully, a very like mature, like relationship, I guess. And so, yeah, I always kind of just remind myself of that. So, with this Easter, uh, he actually asked for her last weekend, but I was off from work still last weekend, and so I told him like, hey, would you mind like picking her up next weekend? And I even asked her too, because he called, I was like, do you want to go today? And she's like, no, next weekend, because we were making, like the mini pancakes at home and, by the way, I have the mini pancake video on our YouTube, so if you guys want to check it out, we made mini pancakes at home, but anywho. So, yeah, she's, she's gone for this weekend and I think what I'm gonna do is just make her a little Easter basket while she's out and just kind of surprise her with it when she gets home. And as she's gotten older, our Easter baskets have become smaller too, so it'll just be something cute, little items that maybe she'll like and then, yeah, that'll be it. But yeah, I hope you all had a great Easter.

Speaker 1: 5:36

I'm officially back at work this week. If you guys follow my social media semester, I'm officially back at work this week. If you guys follow my social media, you guys saw that I did go into emergency surgery it's been two and a half weeks now, I think at the beginning of April and so what had happened was so I haven't been to work in like three weeks because I went on vacation for Emma's spring break. We went to Vegas for the week. We did, we had a lot of fun, we did a lot of different activities. We saw a few magic shows, we saw just different things. We went to the museum, we walked around. So it was a lot of fun. And, yeah, after we came back from Vegas that same weekend and thankfully this didn't happen in Vegas, so that's like a positive to this but when we got back from Vegas that weekend and thankfully I had already like unpacked and done laundry, everything was already like back to normal, I guess, like I had cleaned the house, you know things like.

Speaker 1: 6:36

But yeah, that weekend I started getting like really bad gallbladder pain. And if you guys, I have experienced gallbladder pain, you know what I'm talking about. It's like the most excruciating, like just horrible pain, like it sucks so bad, like you literally feel like you're going to pass out, like it's just bad. So, yeah, I started getting pain and it lasted for three days. So that's when I became like worried because I was like am I just going to be in pain? Because usually with the gallbladder pain, I had experienced it before and it's like it usually lasts like a day for me and then I would just kind of let it go, like just wait it out, type of thing. But this time it lasted three whole days and I couldn't eat anything because it would just hurt. So I was over there eating yogurt, which I found out is dairy, so it was actually making it worse. You know just kind of eating light fruits, protein shakes, things like that, and I was like this is horrible. Because it was still hurting.

Speaker 1: 7:41

I ended up going to the emergency room. They did a I think it was a CT scan, so that's like a whole nother thing, cause, like, going into the CT scan machines is horrible, it's so scary, I'm claustrophobic, like just being in there. So I just like, yeah, it's horrible in itself, but yeah, I ended up having emergency gallbladder removal surgery so they took the gallbladder out so I had to stay at the hospital overnight and then, after that surgery, they're like oh, you have gallstones that were stuck, you know, in the little bile duct. I know you guys are probably like what the heck is that? But the little tube, I don't know. So I actually ended up having a second procedure the next day, and it was just so. I actually ended up having a second procedure the next day and it was just, yeah, it was horrible.

Speaker 1: 8:32

I was at the hospital for four days and then I couldn't eat anything. I didn't eat any food at all for four days. I was literally just on liquids, on IV. I couldn't shower. So I had no shower for four days and obviously, like it was very uncomfortable and painful at the beginning. Like right out of surgery, I have like stitches on my stomach. I couldn't move. I had to sleep facing up, which sucks Pretty much like. I'm still not. I'm still sleeping facing up. I'm just waiting at least three weeks post surgery, but it's a lot of things, so that was not fun.

Speaker 1: 9:15

If you follow me on Instagram, I probably posted a lot about it, because I was sitting in that hospital bed just bored a lot of times by myself and you know like just yeah, but anywho, that ended ended up happening, so I was out of work. So I just came back to work yesterday and obviously, like throughout the past few weeks, I wasn't able to record. But anywho, I'm excited to be back recording and hopefully I'll be recording more episodes because I feel like I have a lot of stuff to talk about. But if you're listening up to this point, thank you, thank you, thank you so much. Remember to subscribe and share and, yeah, I hope you guys are doing great. Check out the old past episodes. I had the past episode a really good speaker. I hope you guys enjoyed the episode and I will talk to you guys soon.