Ode to my gall bladder
Potential TMI behind the cut - short version is I've got gall stones and it hurts if I eat the wrong stuff. Hurts like "they gave me morphine."
So on Inauguration Day, we had pizza for lunch - pepperoni, sausage, and onions - I love it. That evening I had a motherfucker of a tummyache - figured I just had one slice too many. Then I went to GeeneriCon that weekend, and before I left I had an Italian hero, a foot long, again with pepperoni on it - another killer stomach on the drive home. I figured heartburn, that I'm going to need to cut the spicy food. Then the next 3 days in a row, I got hit with major pains at about 5 PM each day. So Wednesday I cave and call the doctor, I don't get my usual, but the one on call. She suggests gall stones, makes me get an ultrasound the next day. It shows inconclusive, so I schedule with the GI for Monday. Saturday I thought I had it figured out, that if I cut out the fat I don't need bile so the gall bladder has nothing to do. Well nonfat cream cheese and jelly on toast should have been OK, but no. Had another attack, had Mom take me to the ER. I got poked and prodded, they gave me morphine and things weren't so bad any more.
Then followed Sunday with another ultrasound and a CT scan. They didn't agree, so Monday they did an MRCP, which is a specific kind of MRI, I guess as a tiebraker. BTW, that was an amazing Superbowl - fuck me that I had to watch it alone in a hospital bed. Well, I had a roomate, but he was this Irish guy who didn't know or care about football and had never watched a Superbowl in 75 years. Turns out his family owns the Caddy dealer my grandparents bought their car from. Anyhows, they had me on nothing-by-mouth from Saturday night to Monday. They wanted to test if I just got better on my own by giving me a normal meal Monday for lunch - no such luck, another attack, but they gave me drugs and let me go home, with a scrip for percoset and an appointment to see the GI today.
Gi thinks they really should have held on to me since I was still hurting, but at least I got to show my face at work and answer questions for some people. Anyhow, he wants me to go back to the ER tonight. His theory is that even though all the scans are kind of iffy, they don't say "nothing is wrong with the gall bladder and bile duct," and with my symptoms he wants to futz around inside me. Nobody wants to pull my gall bladder out yet though, because my liver tests are all out of whack - they need to make sure that it isn't a liver problem first. Otherwise they could pull the GB and then find that I stll have the same problem, and that wouldn't be good for anyone.
For now, they are going to have a guy do an endoscopy where they go down my throat instead of cutting me open. For this one, they knock me out, go down through the throat, stomach, and into the intestine, then stick a catheter up the bile duct, inflate a balloon, and pull it out to scrape the bile duct clear. The GI thinks that this might get rid of my pains and let the liver stabilize, and that if I do have a clog in the bile duct and it gets worse that I could fuck up my pancreas, which would really suck, so they need to do this now. If the liver stabilizes after they do this, they will probably pull the to make sure that I don't get more stones clogging up the works again in the future.
It really sucks to be me right now. The only good side is that I am making lots of progress on a book that has been sitting idle for a while - "Shadows of Saganami," a continuation of the Honor Harrington series that follows a bunch of students of Honor since she's just gotten so uber that it's tough to come up with things to challenge her, and it is also tough to keep things interesting for the reader when your MC is an admiral directing a war from afar when they are used to seeing things from the eyes of a commander in the thick of the action. David Weber knows what the hell he's doing.
So on Inauguration Day, we had pizza for lunch - pepperoni, sausage, and onions - I love it. That evening I had a motherfucker of a tummyache - figured I just had one slice too many. Then I went to GeeneriCon that weekend, and before I left I had an Italian hero, a foot long, again with pepperoni on it - another killer stomach on the drive home. I figured heartburn, that I'm going to need to cut the spicy food. Then the next 3 days in a row, I got hit with major pains at about 5 PM each day. So Wednesday I cave and call the doctor, I don't get my usual, but the one on call. She suggests gall stones, makes me get an ultrasound the next day. It shows inconclusive, so I schedule with the GI for Monday. Saturday I thought I had it figured out, that if I cut out the fat I don't need bile so the gall bladder has nothing to do. Well nonfat cream cheese and jelly on toast should have been OK, but no. Had another attack, had Mom take me to the ER. I got poked and prodded, they gave me morphine and things weren't so bad any more.
Then followed Sunday with another ultrasound and a CT scan. They didn't agree, so Monday they did an MRCP, which is a specific kind of MRI, I guess as a tiebraker. BTW, that was an amazing Superbowl - fuck me that I had to watch it alone in a hospital bed. Well, I had a roomate, but he was this Irish guy who didn't know or care about football and had never watched a Superbowl in 75 years. Turns out his family owns the Caddy dealer my grandparents bought their car from. Anyhows, they had me on nothing-by-mouth from Saturday night to Monday. They wanted to test if I just got better on my own by giving me a normal meal Monday for lunch - no such luck, another attack, but they gave me drugs and let me go home, with a scrip for percoset and an appointment to see the GI today.
Gi thinks they really should have held on to me since I was still hurting, but at least I got to show my face at work and answer questions for some people. Anyhow, he wants me to go back to the ER tonight. His theory is that even though all the scans are kind of iffy, they don't say "nothing is wrong with the gall bladder and bile duct," and with my symptoms he wants to futz around inside me. Nobody wants to pull my gall bladder out yet though, because my liver tests are all out of whack - they need to make sure that it isn't a liver problem first. Otherwise they could pull the GB and then find that I stll have the same problem, and that wouldn't be good for anyone.
For now, they are going to have a guy do an endoscopy where they go down my throat instead of cutting me open. For this one, they knock me out, go down through the throat, stomach, and into the intestine, then stick a catheter up the bile duct, inflate a balloon, and pull it out to scrape the bile duct clear. The GI thinks that this might get rid of my pains and let the liver stabilize, and that if I do have a clog in the bile duct and it gets worse that I could fuck up my pancreas, which would really suck, so they need to do this now. If the liver stabilizes after they do this, they will probably pull the to make sure that I don't get more stones clogging up the works again in the future.
It really sucks to be me right now. The only good side is that I am making lots of progress on a book that has been sitting idle for a while - "Shadows of Saganami," a continuation of the Honor Harrington series that follows a bunch of students of Honor since she's just gotten so uber that it's tough to come up with things to challenge her, and it is also tough to keep things interesting for the reader when your MC is an admiral directing a war from afar when they are used to seeing things from the eyes of a commander in the thick of the action. David Weber knows what the hell he's doing.