Gallstones & Puppy Kissing Diseases

I thought maybe a health update was in order too.

My MRI came back all normal.  Well, except that I have gallstones.  Huh.  The GI guy said I need to have my gallbladder removed.  Gosh, I wish someone had told me that before. ;)  Anyway, no renegade gallstones; they’re all in my gallbladder, huddled together awaiting the big surgery day.

The surgery is now scheduled for March 23rd.  The surgeon had to be out of town on the 16th.  Oy.  But at least my mother is coming to visit and now at least I won’t be spending my birthday recovering from surgery and she won’t spend her birthday flying 12 hours to be hear for my surgery.  She’s already talking about all of the lobster she’s going to eat.  Ick.

However, this did get me worried about what I can eat after surgery.  So far no one has mentioned an after gallbladder surgery diet.  Everything I’ve seen on the web about it has basically said low-fat healthy diet.  Well, I already eat that way, but I’m talking about the day and week after the surgery.  I want to make sure my fridge is stocked correctly so I’m not having to go to the grocery store with discharge instructions in hand after the surgery and worse, try to tell my mother where the grocery store is here because she gets lost way easier than I do and she will surely buy the wrong brands.

Yes, I’m a worrier.

And since we’re on the subject of worrying.  Well, I got to worrying about this wart and cough my Pugly developed.  It didn’t seem like kennel cough but the wart is inside his mouth and it’s ugly and big and white and came on quite sudden.  So, I took him to the vet Saturday.  Turns out he’s got this contagious puppy kissing wart disease.  Apparently there’s no treatment except time.  It’s contagious to puppies under two years but after they’ve let it run its course, they’re immune.  The cough is because the warts are in his throat and some puppies get it so bad that it interferes with their eating and the warts have to be removed, but then they aren’t immune.

So, he got this disease from some hussy puppies at the daycare…I’m telling you, they love him.  And now he has to stay home until they go away.  It could take weeks or months.

The first few days he was well-behaved but yesterday he was very destructive.  I don’t know how the cats or the house or even he is going to survive.

On top of that, it turns out he’s gained 4 pounds at daycare.  My mom thinks, and probably rightly so, that they are giving him treats.  I’ve been so careful about his food intake, but he’s gained about a pound a month!  That’s a lot for a small dog!  The vet says he has to go on a diet.  The poor thing is obsessed with food.  I don’t know how he’ll survive.

Tags: gallbladder, gallstones, surgery, Pug, dog

Fortuitous Turn…Kind Of

Well, it turns out that postponing my surgery might have been an extremely fortuitous turn of events though I was bullied into it by my co-workers who wanted to make sure I did my share of the work while they went on vacation.  Heh.

I’ve been seeing a GI Specialist, you know, and he happened to notice that no one followed up on one particular piece of blood work after my visit to the ER in December when I had my Gallstone attack.  Something about some liver enzyme level or something being high.  Anyway, this could apparently be a sign that I didn’t actually pass all the Gallstones that have come out of my Gallbladder.  One of them could just be loose in the duct, which could explain why I’ve been having painful mini-episodes and twitches that the other doctors and my parents have basically written off as some sort of ghost pangs or spasms.

What’s worse is that if the surgeon goes and takes my Gallbladder out before they do something about the renegade gallstone then it could get lodged in one of the passageways to one of my other organs like my pancreas and cause a major infection.  Apparently right now, the Gallbladder is providing bile or something to help keep it from being really problematic.

That is, if there’s a renegade gallstone.  The truth is that no one knows for sure.

Last week I had my liver enzyme level or whatever checked again and it’s still elevated so I’m off next week to have an MRI of my duct to see if there’s a gallstone hanging out in there playing hookie or something.  If there is, then I have to have yet another procedure where they’ll go in and take it out before they operate on me to remove my gallbladder.

My mother always told me growing up that I always had to do everything the hard way.

Anyway, if I hadn’t postponed my surgery, which had been scheduled for last Friday, I could be finding out the really hard way that I have a loose gallstone, so it could be worse I guess.

Tags: gallbladder, gallstone, MRI, surgery, wellness, health

Waiting While I’d Rather Be Doing Other Stuff

I put in a call to my GP this morning about the pain in my stomach, right side and back, as well as my migraine, bloatiness and lack of appetite.  I said straight out that I’m not going back to the E.R. (or E.D. — interesting that since that series started most actual E.R.’s now want to be called Emergency Departments) and I don’t want to pop oxycodone all the time — makes me too sleepy and discombobulated, and that’s saying something.

As it is all morning I’ve been trying to pry my eyes open.  I can’t decide if it’s not feeling well, leftovers from last night’s oxycodone, or just my regular morning meds…or a combination of them all.  It’s very hard to program with your eyes closed.  OK It’s not hard to program that way.  It’s hard to do the analysis part of my job that way and I’ve been trying to go through papers and notes and code from 9 months ago and figure out what was done and why and what wasn’t done and why not and who decided what because last Friday someone got ants in their pants to actually finally go-live with their project after letting it sit for 9 months and it still doesn’t have anyone in charge.  Oy!

So, while my brain is trying to sleep and wake up and sort out my lack of filing system, I’m now apparently waiting for the surgeon to get out of surgery around 3pm to talk to my GP to discuss what to do about me and my pain and my possible 2nd gallstone attack.

And what I’d really rather be doing is going to the grocery store or paying someone to go to the grocery store and having someone do my dishes while I take a nap or watch my finches.  In fact, I still need to get a photo for today and I’m trying to figure out how to capture a picture that represents the pain I’m feeling.  Any ideas?

Tags: pain, migraine, gallbladder, gallstone, surgeon, GP, grocery store, project365, sleepy

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

My Endangered Gallbladder

I had my ultrasound this morning. My spleen, my kidneys, and my liver didn’t betray me, but my gallbladder…

I’ve always prided myself on being all original parts and all in one piece, except for my wisdom teeth — I had no control over that. My parents were still in co-ownership of my person at that time.

Now, apparently I have gallstones. The tech told me that they’re caused by dairy, which doesn’t make sense to me since dairy is supposed to be one of those things nutritionists tell us we need more of. Granted, WebMD says the gallstones happen when “cholesterol and other substances in the bile form crystals that become hard stones” and cholesterol is a fatty substance found in meat and dairy products. So, the tech was kind of right, I guess.

Anyway, apparently, I have too many of these gallstones, but the good news is that they’ve not travelled anywhere. It’s plain to see that the ducts leading away from the gallbladder haven’t been “dialated” as the tech put it. He said once a stone has been through one, they can’t shrink back down and mine all look normal.

More than likely, my acid reflux and other GI problems are being caused by the irregular release of the bile from my gallbladder because of the stones hanging about in there. They’re just clogging things up. And apparently you can’t break them up once they’ve formed. The only way to get rid of gallstones is to remove the gallbladder.

Or course, my concern was: “Don’t I need my gallbladder?” I mean, God put it there for a reason, didn’t he? I’m always a little wary when anyone starts talking about removing organs because it seems to me that they serve a purpose that I might need if they’re gone.

Apparently, your liver just takes over the functionality — though there are some dietary changes you have to make — or rather, as I recall with Red, there are some you’re supposed to make. With her, there was a lot of “I’m not supposed to eat this, you know!”

And I just know that my mother is dying to tell me “I told you so!” For a month she’s been going on and on about how much simpler gallbladder surgery is now than it was when Red had it, like she’s wishing it on me or something. Damn her. Well, she better be prepared to come take care of me and fetch me comfort food and feed my animals and clean the litter boxes. hehehehehe

Anyway, nothing’s set in stone, so to speak. I still have to go back and discuss it all with my GP, who probably hasn’t even seen the ultrasound pictures yet herself.

Tags: acid reflux, gallstones, gallbladder surgery