dianarchy.net

looking for words

I have taken to quite a few new bloggers lately, including Random Acts of Reality. His most recent post really hit home, considering how guilty I’ve been feeling about not writing.

Let’s see if I can catch you up.

First off, I went to the doctor (gastroenterologist) on Tuesday. It went sort of like this.

“What’s bringing you in today?”

“Well, I’ve got three things that are bothering me, and I’m not sure if they’re related or not, but here they are. The one I’m worried about least because it’s been going on for at least a year is the fact that after I eat, I get this pain right up here under my ribs on my right side. Then for the last five or so months, I’ve been getting these completely random pains. There’s no pattern as far as it’s not after I eat or anything, but it’s always in the same two spots. I am completely incapacitated for five or ten minutes and it’s all I can do to just breathe and stay still. I’m mostly worried that this is going to happen while I’m doing something that I can’t stop, like while I’m helping a patient to the toilet. And finally, for the last week and a half or two weeks, I’ve been able to keep nothing down except chocolate milk. I vomit. A lot.”

“Okay, well, let’s get you up on the examining table and see what we have going on.”

And he poked and prodded and generally hurt me in the way that doctors do. Then he sat me up and said, basically, “Well, what I’m mostly worried about is your vomiting. I’m going to start you on a medicine [Reglan] for a few weeks. It’s not anything we want to be doing forever if we don’t have to, but if it helps, maybe it’ll tell us why. And who knows, you might just have a bug. Also, I want to do an endoscopy, see if we see any ulcers or obstructions. I don’t think we will, you’re still way too young to be having anything like that going on.”

“What about my other thing? I mean, my mother had gallbladder problems, and I work in nuclear medicine. I see your patients all the time with orders for HIDA scans saying, ‘Post prandial RUQ pain, rule out cholecystitis’. Do you think it could be my gallbladder?”

“No, I don’t think it’s your gallbladder, because your CT scans looked normal in that area. Now, granted, they were mostly looking at your appendix and kidneys, not your liver. Let’s order an ultrasound just to be sure.”

So he ordered some bloodwork (CBC’s and LFT’s, with the former being normal and the latter being normal-for-me-which-means-through-the-roof), the ultrasound (which was painful again, but normal excepting my extremely fatty liver), and the endoscopy is next Tuesday. The day before I fly out to my mother’s place.

And what else? The day after I get back from Minnesota, I have a dentist appointment and a pap smear. Goody. I’m actually looking forward to the pap. I’ve got a skin tab down there and while I’m nowhere near a vain person, but this one has … changed. I just want to know if it’s something I should worry about. And I promise that if he says it isn’t, I won’t. Of course, if he does say it’s something I should worry about, by God, I am the best worrier out there.

That’s about all that’s happening to me. I just found out today that Ian is going to war in four months, and I’m terrified for him and for his family.