The Cub in the Water

WHAT IS LIFE IF IT ISN'T UNEXPECTED?

That night, after I picked my clothes from the apartment I got a call from Rox, "Mia! I'm glad you are in the city! My family is having a little gathering today. Pozole night. Do you want to come?"

I hadn't seen her in a while, "It'll be fun. Sure," I agreed to meet her.

"Awesome. I'll pick you up at Karina's house."

Seeing Rox's family was fun, they were always nice to me and I cared for them because of it. We ate like crazy. It was like a pre-Christmas family thing, there were tons of food. The most delicious meal on the table was the promised pozole. It was so good that I ate around three big bowls of it leaving no space for dessert or anything else whatsoever.

After a nice night out, Rox took me back to Karina's house. Later in the night, I started to resent dinner. I just wasn't used to eating like that anymore. I had stopped eating greasy food and I didn't eat quite as much as I used to.

Around two thirty 'o'clock in the morning, I started feeling bad. I thought that I had a stomach ache that would eventually result in vomiting or diarrhea. After almost an hour of sitting on the bathroom floor waiting for something to happen, nothing did.

The pain didn't get any better with time. I tried to put hot water in my belly, tried inducing vomit, and some other home remedies like teas and stuff. Nothing seemed to work. I felt like two gigantic hands were squeezing my torso. The pain came from the lower back all the way to the stomach.

After hearing me in the bathroom for a while Isabel came in, "Are you okay?"

I explained what was happening and everything I tried to make the pain go away.

"What should we do?" she asked concerned.

"I'll call my dad to hear what his thoughts are."

Honestly, when I'm sick I don't complain much. I think I have a high pain threshold. However, this time it really hurt. I called my dad in the middle of the night and told him about the pain and my attempts to stop it.

"Do you want to go to the hospital?" he asked.

"Maybe. I don't know what else to do. It doesn't seem to be going away or decreasing as time goes by."

"Mia, you need someone to go with you and stay there."

"My mom is in the city."

"Oh Mia, are you sure?"

"I don't see many options dad..."

I called my mom and explained what happened. I feared that after everything that went down she might pull one of those, "You decided to go with your father, you two solve this problem now," she didn't. Fifteen minutes later she was picking me up at Karina's house and fifteen minutes after that we were in the E.R. room at the hospital.

After a couple of lab results and an ultrasound, the doctor said, "You have stones in the gallbladder. This needs an operation. We have to remove the organ."

By the time the doctor came with the results and his conclusion, it was already seven in the morning and I was feeling fine. The pain had gone away, and I was ready to go out of the hospital and meet my friends that night for our Christmas dinner. "An operation? I feel fine now. I think that's a bit extreme."

"Well, you feel fine now because the pain that comes from having stones in your gallbladder is temporary. It gets triggered by different stuff, like certain foods for example, or changes in your diet. What did you eat yesterday?"

"Uhm... I had three bowls of pozole. I hadn't had that kind of food in months, though."

"There's your answer," he looked at me as if waiting for me to say something about the matter. "Listen, you are free to go if you want to. However, this is a situation you'll have to fix eventually. You'll have to get your gallbladder removed someday. And make no mistake, this will hurt again. The more you delay the procedure the more it will hurt when the pain comes around. It is now or eventually. Your call."