Reality Bites

So…

For the most part, I work really hard at being little miss mary sunshine.  Sometimes it takes more work than others.  Sometimes it is pretty much cake.  This early morning I’m sitting in the chilly (62 in the house) morning house… the only sounds this morning are the dog chewing her dry food and burping and the not so rhythmic click of my fingers on the keys of my keyboard.

I’ve been having stomach pains.  The symptoms have seemed to be (to the Dr too) generally related to a gallbladder problem.  Dr poked and prodded and sent me for an ultrasound.  It took a week to get the pre-approval from the insurance (want to be sure the chick without any “women’s” plumbing after that total hysterectomy isn’t just trying to see the baby) and the test was done yesterday.

The lady that did the ultrasound hit some spots that felt like very deep bruises and there were a couple times that I would dearly have loved to hit her.  But I didn’t. She sent me on my way telling me that the Dr would have the results by the afternoon.  And they did.

PA called me with someone’s interpretation of the results.  I also got the test results that were on My Chart (I really like that feature of Cleveland Clinic) and read through their interpretation.  The PA assured me that my Gallbladder is not inflamed, infected and that I don’t have gallstones.  I should keep taking the industrial strength Zantac, stay on a low fat diet (cause there’s nothing wrong so it is a given that I should stay on a bland diet) and follow up with my regular PCP in… oh… about 5 weeks now.

Funny… when I read the results of the test, it showed some accumulation of gallbladder sludge and what seems to be hepatic liver changes.  Technically… it showed “increased hepatic echogenicity”… which seems to be (thank you reliable medical websites) frequently connected to high alcohol consumption (which… I don’t even get a glass of wine at the fancy dinners that work throws when we are on the road, even for the toast… I toast with ‘Coke-a-regular’ or ‘Coke-a-normal’ depending on the country so it isn’t that) or… (insert Daht-daht-da-dahhhhhhhhh) use of methotrexate.

So, I sent of a message to my rheumy to have her look and take everything into account and now I’m waiting to hear from her.

I don’t wait well.

Last night I had an ever so small panic attack.  I took a long hot bath to try to convince myself that it’s all okay… and now I wait.

I’m not sure how to feel… but scared seems to be winning out this morning.

There has to be some kind of irony in the fact that I went because of the pain… and they found the sludge that is probably causing the pain… and I’m looking at maybe now catching MTX side effects reasonably early before there is too much damage… and what there is is likely reversible (no scarring yet).

And… the adventure continues…

Updated: September 24, 2014
Author: Figment of Fitness
Keep your dreams alive