Before people start to feel like I’m in my dying bed already, I want to give everybody a status update on my current pancreatitis.
It seems like it’s just a new acute pancreatitis not entirely related to the first episode from last year. The good news is that I have more pancreas than the doctors expected, as they didn’t expect a new pancreatitis at all. The bad news is that the primary cause is still there.
I don’t have a fever today, I don’t have many tubes till going in and out of my body, certainly not as many as last year. I still have an IV needle in my left arm (with no IV on it), and my right arm, from which they removed the needle about an hour ago, is still hurting. Nonetheless I’m quite fine. I can walk around just fine, without pain or dizzy spells, which again is in contrast to last year, as even before entering the ICU I was unable to walk around alone because of the pain.
All in all it seems like my pancreatitis subsided and it’s now on its way out, the reason why I’m hospitalized is finding and removing the primary source. At the end of the day it seems like the primary cause was and still is gallstones, which, to be solved, would require to get my gallbladder removed. Nothing too serious, and something lots of people cope with, it’s just going to be a bit messier for me than the standard, for what the doctors of this hospital said.
The problem is that the laparoscopy that is used for most gallbladder removals might not work on me because of the results of last year’s pancreatitis, and thus they might have to give me a laparotomy which means cutting me open to remove the gallbladder.
At any rate, next week I’ll be in contact with some doctors from another hospital (Verona) which will also check me out and decide who will be my surgeon, and where.
For what concerns my involvements within Gentoo, I’m to be considered temporarily offline, even though I do read mail and I could (notice could) enter IRC for meetings and everything. I’ll see to find a temporary proxy for me anyway so that he/she will be able to take up for me what I was meaning to do. I think I’ll have to reconsider a possible nomination next year though, as I don’t want my health to take hits because of the stress coming from Gentoo Council.
I hope I’ll be able to stick around to help with easy problem solving, but please don’t count too much on me. I’ll try to have my status updated from time to time so that I don’t get people too worried. I have my UMTS phone with me, which is very useful, using the same flatrate I used last year. I would have loved having one of the HSDPA USB modems but all the UMTS providers in Italy seems to require a minimum contract of 24 months which is a bit too much for something that I used intensively, in the last twelve months, for just two.
