Puerto Rico/Gall bladder

May 07, 2024

Patrick qualified for President's Club this year through work. Wow! Do they treat you like royalty. All expenses paid, credits for food/gifts, and money towards an excursion. We picked to get a massage but ended up cancelling as we were having so much fun drinking by the pool with his co-workers.

I'm not going to lie, I am very jealous my work does not offer this reward!

We were in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, which is on the east side of the island. This was my first time going to Puerto Rico. We were supposed to go back in May of 2020 for a wedding and we all know how that year went.

He was the view from our room.

We were the last group to arrive. We quick changed and went down by the pool for the welcome dinner. They had some dancers and shots of rum being passed around. It started raining shortly after dinner, so the group moved inside to the bar in the resort. It was a late night and I was not feeling the best the next morning....

Jimmy/Pat. There's no Pat with out Jimmy and no Jimmy with out Pat. These two started from the bottom and it's fun to see them both make it to President's club together.

We've gone through stages of life similar to each other. Married about a year apart and Jimmy has triplets who are 4 months younger than Branko.

The next day, I pulled it together and we went to the private island. It was a short boat ride to get there and we met with a small group of people and enjoyed drinks/food/each other's company.

After we got back to the resort, we got ready for the award ceremony.

After the award ceremony, they had a conga line to get everyone outside where music/fireworks/the dancing began.

They also had a cigar table for everyone to enjoy.

The next day, we drank by the pool all afternoon. One of the guys that works for Patrick's company, Stefan, went to school with me in kindergarten. We became friends in middle school and then briefly in college. It was good to see him!

One last pic before take off

We got home from the airport around 10, we ordered taco bell, went to bed, and as soon as I laid down, I started experiencing right upper quadrant pain again. I had been having pain in that area for about a week and a half prior to the Puerto Rico trip. I went to urgent care and was told to follow up with outpatient GI.

After about 5-6 hours of the pain that would not go away and was getting worse, I told Pat we needed to go to the emergency room. Luckily, the boys were still at my parents house as we both had to work the following day after the trip. I went to the ED, they gave me morphine/zofran, did an ultrasound and it showed that I had multiple gall stones and a positive murphy sign (where they push in between your ribs to see if you have pain). Once I was diagnosed, I was told that I needed to go to the hospital to get surgery and they gave me my room number. I was at a stand alone ED that was connected to a clinic building, not a hospital. I checked into the hospital around 5 AM and had surgery around 11 and went home around 5PM. I was so drugged up and kept falling asleep. Around 3PM, I was like, what am I doing sleeping around like this? I need to get up and pee and eat before the doctors leave for the day! My plan worked and we got discharged just in time.

$4000 later...

Thanks mom and dad for watching our boys for 7 days!

Flowers sent to me from my office mates :)

At last, we were reunited with our boys!

(But first some photos of Patrick walking across the stage and shaking hands with the CEO)

Succulent from Mary, thank you!

I wasn't able to lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk for 2 weeks. Pats mom and my mom helped me out with Conrad since I wasn't able to lift him. I took 3 days off of work, but really had about a week off since I work part time. Post op day 1 was the worst as it hurt to breathe. People had asked me if getting my gall bladder removed or c-section was worse, the first day, I was dramatic and said my gall bladder was worse. Then on the second day, the pain was completely gone and I just had really bad gas pain in my right shoulder. They inject you with gas to visualize the gall bladder better and it gets trapped inside and causes a lot of dull pain!

Laying low and cuddling with my boy.

I took Branko to a birthday party 4 days after surgery, I was feeling really good and normal! It was Iris' 3rd birthday, we couldn't miss it!

I was trying to get a picture of Iris and Branko and Iris fell down the slide

It was princess theme, so we got some cool rings, tiaras and magic wands.

We got Iris a pedicure kit, the princess gets what she wants!

These boy parents aren't used to the princess gear

Back to the superheros

One of my co workers was giving away some of her Melissa and Doug toys. We got the deli and coffee set.

You can find both boys sitting at the table playing with super heros. Branko just can't know that Conrads playing with them, he sure is possessive over his toys.