Down my throat - How poking someone with a wire can take months to prepare?

White, yellow, white, yellow, white, yellow, white... blue, yellow, white, -someone needs to fix that light bulb, it is totally out of place!-.

That was going on in my head as the nurses took my stretcher (with me on it, of course) headed for my first "surgery" (in quotes, because people tend to call any medical procedure like that. But an endoscopy is a non-surgical procedure).

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It all started almost 8 months ago, after the classic holidays meals: X-mas, new year's eve took a toll in my digestive system. Nothing to be concerned about, heartburn is totally normal after you eat like a pig! I had a bit of pain -for you to know what "a bit" means for me you need to consider that I pulled out 2 of my molars with some pliers because they were annoying me-, so I headed to the hospital the diagnosis: Gastritis.
The diet worked out well, it turns out that the symptomatic treatment for all the gastroenterologic disorders and diseases is a generic recipe: Starve and you'll feel better.

So, I did.

But, it wasn't the end of it, weeks later, after eating -literally- nothing harmful (some crackers, no salt, no fat!): The pain came back stronger than ever.

Take a small pebble with rough and sharp edges, tie a string across it with both ends protruding out to both sides grab it firmly in your hand while you add pressure with your other hand and ask someone to pull the strings so that the pebble moves in your hand cutting and ripping your skin down to the bone: That is how it felt but inside the abdomen.

The pain is so excruciating that it paralyzes your body, one cannot breathe right, one cannot walk, one cannot do anything but to fall to the ground in fetal position, hoping for the pulses of pain to give you a break (Note to self: Remember how the fetal position is a natural reaction to pain and danger in extreme cases and write about it later!)-.

So, hospital again.
Diagnosis: Stones in the gallbladder. The removal of it is imperative through a laparoscopy (make 3 small holes in the abdomen, inflate it with some air and introduce the needed tools through those holes, leaves virtually no scars where 20 years ago it'd left a nice slash in the skin as a reminder of what eating junk food can do).
Of course, it didn't end there.
The surgery was delayed thanks to the classic bureaucratic tradition of "stall everything you can, just to show how powerful you're". Here's the fun part: As I was bedridden in the hospital for nearly a week, waiting for a jerk to sign a damned paper, I got the worse pain in my life, the same one I described before but multiplied tenfold. I was injected with morphine.

A sonography showed that I also had stones in my liver: The initial cause of all my pain.

If there's a trait that we could remark as human, this would be our adaptive ability. We can get used to anything if the needed time is provided. In my case, I got used to pain.

Tired of waiting, I came back home. If I have to cope with pain I rather do it while staring at a ceiling that is mine, with no noisy neighbors or annoying visitors that chatter about how many times did the dog fart today.

With a nice diet and starving, I managed to lower my bilirubin blood levels from 5.5mg/dl to 1.5 (0.3 is normal); from looking like a yellow duck with orange eyes, I was starting to look like a pure-breed human again.

A week ago, I had a call from the hospital: They wanted to do a blood check because my "surgery" was ready!!!

My homemade treatment did its job, I had no swelling, no infection and was perfectly "good to go" into the procedures room... 140km away from the hospital (because, this is a sh*tcountry). I was moved in an ambulance to an establishment that specializes in gastroenterology for my first medical procedure ever.

Literally, what they did is: Unclog my liver by poking the rock with a wire that had a camera in its tip. Total anesthesia, wire down my throat through my stomach gallbladder and into my liver. It all went smoothly.
I have a small reminder to give you in case you ever have to experience this or any medical procedure that involves a risk: The surgeon, while describing the procedure, mentioned "puncture and perforation" as a "risk" that sometimes happened "per sé", not as a human error... You ain't wordplaying ME pal: Bad praxis is bad praxis, no matter how you word it. Be very wary about that kind of thing!!!
I still signed the consent.

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So, here I am now!!! Back into steemit ready to flag shitposters and spammers while hoping for interesting content to show up.
This is not the end of my journey... My gallbladder still needs to be removed!