Bye Bye Gallbladder

So I had to back to the Emergency Room because of the gallbladder thing - was having a terrible night, in a lot of pain, and just about inconsolable.  This time the ER was in Maryland, and this time I had health insurance, and bada bing, bada boom - they did all sorts of tests, found that the little GB was completely blocked by a 1.1 inch stone, and was not functioning at all - so I had emergency surgery to get the thing out, they sliced it open and in it were probably 40 or more stones, most of them fairly large.  And they were swimming in a major infection too.  So this was actually life threatening!  I could have died had it gone on much longer.

The surgeon was very nice to me and told me that I had been sick and suffering for a long time.  No kidding?

Moral of the story is not to put these things off.  Take care of yourselves.  And make sure you have health insurance since hospitals seem to take much better care of you if you do.

Could somebody pass the Duke's mayonnaise?

I just moved to Maryland...not even 72 hours ago, with my kid, my husband, my Jetta, my cats, and a 26 foot long U-Haul truck.  Changed my life in one fell swoop.  One weekend.  Seriously.  It's nice up here even though I'm still tired.  The trees and mountains are beautiful.  All of the leaves have changed into gold, red, or orange.  The campus I work on is gorgeous, and my apartment here is amazing!  But there's a few things I've noticed so far that surprised me even more than all of that.

I'm a southerner.  Definitely.  Even though I previously wrote about how bored I was at times with my country upbringing, now it's almost a source of pride.  Yep, there were cows next door.  And yes, I have an accent.  I say y'all.  I like Duke's mayo on my tomato sandwiches.  I talk about my "Granny."  It's colder up here and I have a legitimate right to complain if I want to.  I'm from Georgia for crying out loud.  We don't have winter.  It just gets a little nippy in January.   

People here say, "I'm from PA," instead of I'm from Pennsylvania.  Fortunately this southerner was smart enough to remember the state abbreviations!  And they don't pronounce Maryland correctly either...it's like the y and the d get left out.  But they are nice and I'm reminded everyday that I'm still below the Mason Dixon line.  So officially I'm not a Northerner.  Not that anyone in a million years would ever think that anyway.  

It will be a very interesting transition for me, but so far I'm having a good time.