Goodish News But No Answers Still

Well, I saw the surgeon yesterday and it’s taken me a while to digest what he had to say. Really I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.

The surgeon told me that he’s not going to do the surgery; he’s not convinced that it will relieve my symptoms. Yes, I have gallstones and they are indeed all sitting in there hanging about, but there’s no proof that they are menacing me in any way, he said. Apparently, he thinks my symptoms are from “something else”.

You know, that mysterious ellusive “something else” that has been haunting and taunting and traumatizing me for 20 years or so.

So…

He is recommending to my GP that I see a Gastroenterologist as he thinks I might have Irritable Bowel Syndrome, bringing me full circle. I guess he saw the look of frustration on my face.

O.K. Let’s face it. IBS is what they tell people they have when doctors basically don’t know what else is wrong and have no idea what else to try. The next thing you know, you’re on muscle relaxants and some special diet that’s either super low-fiber or super-high fiber and they just toy with that until you give up and stop going to see them and pretend you can live with it.

And my last Gastroenterologist was a complete quack. I really have little faith in the specialty. I didn’t care for him or his partners. After my upper GI, I had to page one of his partners due to a discomfort I felt after hours and the partner on call was quite rude and condescending.

Mind you, that was down in New Orleans and all of the doctors I’ve encountered here in Maine have been wonderful, but I’m still a bit wary.

But the surgeon must have seen my discomfort. He started on a spiel about how a lot has changed in the last 10 years or so in the field and how they’ve discovered a lot about IBS and how to treat it and how it’s no longer treated by fiddling with a person’s fiber in their diet.

Anyway, he did say that if I see the GI and the GI says it’s the gallstones that are the problem, he’ll do the surgery, but I guess he wants the second opinion. It makes sense.

So for now I get to keep all of my body parts.

Still, I feel very frustrated. It feels like a huge step backward for me. Like I was so close to finding a solution and the answer slipped through my fingertips like sand. I so want to know what it’s like for other people. How do they go through their day? What’s it like not to have to worry about where the bathrooms are or whether or not you’ll even go today? What’s it like to feel like your body isn’t betraying you?

Tags: wellness, gastroenterologist, gallbladder surgery, gallstones, IBS

Recommended Reading - 08/01/06

• An Epidemic of Hatred — Shakespeare’s Sister has written an excellent must-read piece on the lack of media attention on the war against homosexuality in America.
  

  Consider for a moment the stories you see on the nightly news. Try to recall the scare stories that are built up around two children nationwide getting injured by a faulty toy, or three people nationwide having died from side effects of a medication, or ten people in your city having been attacked by pit bulls over the last twenty years. “A rash of incidents.” “An epidemic.” “What can we do?” “What you need to know to protect yourself.”

  Consider that after two women died after taking RU-486 (after it has been dispensed over half a million times), two anti-choice Senators jumped to propose legislation that would suspend the use of the drug.

  Consider that as the Senate passed legislation to federally criminalize the evasion of parental notification laws, the Republican Senator who wrote the legislation justified it by saying, “If it is happening 20 times a year, it is still worth doing to protect those parental rights and to protect those children from being in these kinds of situations.”

  Consider that the flag-burning amendment was deemed a necessity, though only something like five flags have burned in decades.

  Consider that the Pledge Protection Act was deemed a necessity, on the possibility that someone might bring a legal challenge based on the phrase “Under God.”

  Consider that one of the primary rationales among opponents of marriage equality is that it must be prevented lest preposterous hypotheticals about men wanting to marry dogs come to fruition.

  How little it takes to whip up the media into an exploitative frenzy, all in the name of “protecting” us. How little it takes to move our Congress to pay attention to an issue and pass legislation to “protect” us. (Which is, of course, ever an excuse to limit our rights, but they nonetheless claim it’s about “protection.”) One or two incidents, or, sometimes, just an imaginary scenario of what might happen. That’s all it takes.

  But in the course of two months, there have been at least six vicious attacks on the LGBT community, and the media is silent. And Congress, well, they were pushing for an amendment to deny equal rights to same-sex couples. Their focus was “protecting the sanctity of marriage.” They’re more concerned with protecting an institution, an abstract concept, than protecting people.

  When churches throughout the South were being burned, it was national news. When a hate crime at Seattle’s Jewish Federation claimed the life of someone the other day, it was national news. And it should have been, in both cases. But an epidemic of hatred against the LGBT community in this country is not garnering the same attention—even as Congress pursues discriminatory legislation and courts are ruling against challengers to marriage inequality.

  Think there’s a correlation?

  The anti-gay hysteria that’s leading to an epidemic of hate crimes against the LGBT community is constantly being inflamed by the GOP’s use of gay rights as a wedge issue, their use of anti-gay rhetoric, their exploitation of anti-gay sentiment. And even with people being attacked and their homes being burned, the Dems can’t be arsed to take a bloody principled stand. And the media doesn’t care. They’ve finally got a real epidemic on their hands and it’s utter silence.

  Read the whole thing…

  And then do something about it.

  Write your Congress members and your local media and tell them to pay attention to this Epidemic of Hatred against the LGBT community. Donate to LGBT advocacy groups. Straight people, register your support with Atticus Circle and PFLAG. And keep talking about this. Blog this issue. Tell anyone who will listen and get them involved.

  Hatred flourishes in silence. Let’s make some noise.

• Israel, anti-Semitism, and the experience of being a lapsed Secular Jew in America — Jill @ Brilliant at Breakfast brings us her unique viewpoints from a lapsed American Jew on Israel, Lebanon, Mel Gibson and recent remarks by Ron @ Middle Earth Journal.
  

  These are tough times to be on the left side of the fence with even a marginally Jewish identification. Sometimes the left is as knee-jerk in its “Israelis are butchers” generalizations as the right is in its “everything Israel does is justified” attitude. I’m disgusted at the nearly 60-year-long battle on the part of the Arab world to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Right now I feel like a parent with two squabbling kids in the back seat of the car. I don’t give a shit who started it. I just want it to stop. As Bill Cosby once said about HIS kids, I don’t want justice, I want quiet. Deal with it and find a way to live with it. It’s not that the Arab world is so fond of the Palestinians

  I’m equally appalled at the Israelis thinking they can prevent another Holocaust by behaving like Nazis. I’m doubly appalled because these are supposed to be arguably “my people.” These are the people who are really the public face of worldwide Jewry.

  There is plenty of blame to go around here. I don’t think we need to choose up sides.

  I understand that opposition to Israel doesn’t necessarily mean hatred of all Jews.
  So why does it FEEL as though it does? Why, even when I agree with the anti-Israel blog rant, does my stomach knot up?

• Wise Old Toddlers. — Michael Reynolds @ Donklephant wrote this excellent piece which perfectly describes the state of the government as I’ve come to understand it. It’s made my head hurt. I’ve felt as if my brain was seeping out of my ears over the last few years but this piece is exactly the way I’ve pictured it.
  

  Toddler: We always said it would be bloody.

  Adult: No, you said it would be a cakewalk.

  Toddler: Everyone knew there would be difficult patches.

  Adult: The Iraqi police are militia death squads, refugees are fleeing the killing that takes place right under our noses, the Iraqi army keeps ’standing up’ and yet we’re sending more guys, our army is overstretched, our own intel admit that Iraq is the new jihadist training ground and that it’s been a boon to terrorist recruiting, the Syrians are less afraid of us and the Iranians are laughing as they process fissile materials right next door.

  Toddler: Yes, of course, exactly what we always said would happen. And a good thing, too.

  Adult: Oh, and it’s cost us hundreds of billions.

  Toddler: Yes, just as we said: it’s paying for itself. Why, it’s working out marvelously. Just you don’t lose heart. You’ll see.

• We’re Afraid! Please Spy On Us More! — Becky @ Preemptive Karma writes about Fox News “scaremongering” efforts to assist the Bush Administration to easily scare American citizens into giving up their freedom not to be spied upon by thier government. Fox News went so far as to suggest that an American city would be nuked by Hezbollah (remember al-Qaeda?).
  

Tags: Israel, Lebanon, Mel Gibson, Bill Cosby, Palestinians, Jew, Arab, Nazis, Iraq, George W. Bush, politics, Fox News, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda