Anniversary! And More Galling News.

Whelp, it's M's and my first wedding anniversary!  How are we spending it?

...well, we both slept in way too late yesterday as we're both night owls and off work until January 5th for the holidays.  So, it's 3:30 am and we're both still up.  He's playing Mass Effect 3 (again), and I'm running a Pokemon Emerald Nuzlocke...as I clearly am a glutton for punishment from my video games.

But yeah!  We were both determined our anniversary would be spent mostly resting (as we've both ran laps around ourselves for weeks prior to this one and because how I feel physically right now changes almost as fast as blinking) and on a nice dinner out.  On our honeymoon, we ate at a great little restaurant named Japan One, where we got the best sushi either of us has ever had.  This year, we're reliving that at our local Japanese restaurant (which is only about 6 months old) with a sushi dinner, followed by dessert at our local frozen yogurt shop (and one of my favorite places--and they have bubble tea, people!  I have it on good authority that that makes my town a real town.  Next stop? Wegmans!)

After that, the week we have off will be spent putting our apartment into order and getting ready for my surgery on January 7th.  Yes, 7 am on the 7th, my gallbladder will be gone.  I'm hoping it helps with a lot of my pain issues.  My dad mentioned that his gallbladder never technically burst--it just died.  He did, however, mention that a ton of my pain issues and symptoms are all ones he had before his died and rotted inside of him and that all of them were gone after his surgery.  That is a huge comfort to me.

Obviously, I'm nervous about surgery, but I'm to the point where I just want it over with and done.  I want my life back.  I want my normal energy levels back.  I want my right side to stop hurting all.  The.  Time.

Happy Curry-mas! ;)

Being an adult educator means you sometimes do things never even imagined would be in your job description.  Today's adventure?

Test-running a so-called simple chicken curry recipe...mostly as the author of said recipe thought it serves two people.  Yyeeaahh...try seven...at least...if they fill their plates with curry and rice.

Verdict?  Edible, tasty, and pretty darn fool-proof by my standards!  It really was as simple as she said, thank God.  (Remember--I am running this with some novice cooks.  Simple is the rule for the day.)

But YEAH!  Bring on Friday's holiday presentation!  Group India is ready, yo.

The Pain Saga: The Lap and Beyond.

This is part two of my pain diary.  Everything is behind a cut as it's massively long; feel free to skip it if so you desire.

This particular section is also written as a list instead of a diary, mostly as things happened much faster.

The Pain Saga: Pre Lap Era

So, now that I have some answers, I figure I can write up what life has been like the past few years leading to this biliary dyskinesia diagnosis.  Perhaps writing this up will help some random Google traveler to figure out what's up with them before they suffer as long as I did!

I also want this listed here so I don't forget in the future what I went through during this time period.  This literally has been a saga in my life--2011 to now--of non-stop pain issues, all starting around 2008.  So it's not so painfully dull, I'll add in some pictures from each period of time.  Perhaps seeing how well I hid my pain will explain why this took so long to solve.

I'll also put this all behind a jump cut so I'm not clogging up anyone's browser against their will!

We Will Pretend This Sleep Madness Makes Sense

It's 4 am here.  The wicked exhaustion I fought off all day prompted me to doze from 7 pm to 1:30 am.  Hubby let me crash as, let's all be honest here and quote him directly, "When you came home so surly, my first thought was, 'Geeze, does someone ever need a nap!'"  (True love right there, folks.)

And I did.  Only now I woke up with a really sore elbow (slept on it funny), heartburn (my ever-present frenemy the past few days), and still sleepy but unable to sleep.  So probably going to take something to crash here in a bit so my entire Saturday isn't wasted.

Then I look across the hall, where my hubby dozed off on that couch...and all I can think is, "Holy crap, do I ever love that man."  And I feel all happy inside...and conflicted as I know he'll be in pain if I leave him sleeping there, but I don't want to disturb him, either.

So, to attempt to add some cohesion to this, anyone got a good remedy for gallbladder-caused heartburn?  Because I'm about out of ideas here and would really, really, really like to sleep more than 4-6 hours at a shot sometime in the next, oh, week.

A (Happily) Failed Test

My doctor called with the results of my HIDA scan with CCK.  My gallbladder doesn't work.  Though it looks totally normal on scans (past being a wee bit larger than expected) and though it is totally stone-free from what they can see, it doesn't eject bile anywhere near the rate it should.  The office didn't give many details past that and a, "It doesn't work much at all--so little that it has to come out."

I nearly cried...I was shaking on the phone as I heard words that, though scary, were such a relief.  I'm not crazy.  There's something wrong with me, and they finally found it.  Three years of suffering, and I finally have answers!  I shouldn't be so elated to need surgery, but I finally--FINALLY--know why I've been in pain so long.

I know why my digestive system randomly rebels.

I know why I get stabbing pain in my ribs that takes my breath away if I move wrong.

I know why my entire abdomen feels inflated if I eat (seemingly) random foods.

I know why I never can fully know how a meal will affect me.

I know why I suddenly have had heartburn problems for the first time in my life.

I know why I am nauseous every single day of my life with no rhyme or reason.

I know why I'm so unbelievably exhausted all the time.

I know why so many of my aches and pains make absolutely no sense when compared with my known medical problems (supposed estrogen sensitivity and a chronically inflamed right ovary that has a near-ridiculous affinity towards making functional cysts that are smaller than my pain levels indicate.).

I'll still have cyst problems with my ovaries, and there's no way to know exactly what all of my symptoms come from my failing gallbladder before surgery is done, but the bizarre pain parts of my symptoms finally have some plausible, tangible answers with a solution at hand.  Within a few days, I'll have an appointment scheduled with a surgeon to determine when my gallbladder will be removed.  Due to a family history of gallbladder's bursting, mine is to be removed to avoid that possible complication.

On another interesting side to this, we know now over two decades later why my dad's gallbladder seemingly went from totally normal to gangrenous overnight.  (Back story from what I can recall--when I was really little, my dad went into an ER with horrible pains and was sent away.  He soon went back in with the same symptoms and a very high fever.  They decided to remove his gallbladder "electively," mostly to shut him up.  Lo and behold, when they got inside of him they found his gallbladder was not only leaking, but it was gangrenous from leaking for such a long time.  At some point, it burst.  No one knew why or how it happened, but it baffled all doctors as he had no symptoms of gallstones prior to the event.  His mother had her own gallbladder removed under similar circumstances, but hers never burst or developed gangrene.)  My PCP thinks my dad's own gallbladder stopped working like mine and, over a period of years, damaged itself to the point of bursting.  We're glad I didn't go that route, and my PCP and his office are operating assuming that they caught mine in time.

So, praise God!  There's a light at the end of this tunnel!

Gallbladder, Round Two

My PCP ordered a HIDA scan to rule out gallbladder once and for all as the cause of many of my issues.  I have to be at the hospital for it between 7:30 and 7:45 tomorrow morning.  Time right now?  4:15 am...this is NOT the time to have insomnia, brain!  And since I have to fast for this, I can't even down chamomile tea to knock me out.

*insert the loud sound of one Cherish's head hitting a desk in frustration*

This would be a significantly smaller problem if the HIDA scan was the ONLY thing I have to do tomorrow.  I'm returning to work at noon, partaking in a long, oft-tiresome meeting, then going straight from work to help set up a company outreach event we do annually until late evening.  That event will kick off on Saturday at 7:30 am.  To say sleep deprivation isn't allowed for tomorrow would be an understatement, but I fear that's just the reality I'm facing.

...Maybe I have a copy of "Walden; or, Life in the Woods" from college...that always knocked me out back in my English major days.

(...no offense to you Walden lovers...I just am NOT one of them.  I understand the greatness of Thoreau's work from a literary perspective and a cultural one, but I have no love of it personally.)