Testimonial - Comforting Local Care (Gallbladder Surgery)

My name is Sara Larson. I am from Elkton, South Dakota. I live there with my husband Josh and six children and I enjoy making cakes in my spare time: wedding, birthday, whatever. And I'm home with the kids, all day every day.
 

Why Did You Have Your Gallbladder Removed? 

After I had a colonoscopy, we still didn't know why I was feeling so sick. So, they did a CT scan of my abdomen and they were specifically looking at my gallbladder to see if there was something wrong with it. On the CT scan it didn't look too bad, Dr. Johnson said. But he still kind of felt like that was the culprit in why I wasn't feeling good and why I was losing so much weight and things like that. So, he said, "When in doubt, take it out". So we did. I was kind of nervous, I had never had a surgery before, but I wanted to feel better.
 

What Support Did the Brookings Health System Staff Provide?

I went in and I just describe it as them kind of treating me like family. I felt very comfortable. It wasn't like I was in a hospital. It was just like I was in a room, just a bedroom. And they helped me prep and they put the big cuffs on my legs to help my blood circulate and explained things to me and made sure I was comfortable with it and okay. And they gave me time alone with my husband to pray and prep by ourselves. It was good.
 

How Was Your Pain Managed?

The pain, I didn't know what to expect. I'd never had surgery before. To have the pain medicine, I only took two of them because I don't like taking medicine at all. It was very manageable and I recovered very quickly. My gallbladder actually was way worse than the CT showed. It was stuck to part of the inside of me and it was coiled up on itself, so they needed to do one more incision than they had thought just to help get it out. So I was very glad that we did it and got the yucky thing out of there.
 

How Was Your Recovery?

I was back to my normal activities probably a week, a week and a half afterwards. We had family in town to kind of help with everybody and it was Christmas break so my husband didn't have school, which was nice.

What Did You Appreciate Most About Brookings Health System?

I appreciated that it was so comfortable and that they were able to calm my nerves about the whole thing and they just made me feel I was gonna be okay and there wasn't anything to worry about.