In the wonderful world of Medical Oddities, it seems that my family is a prime carrier of a gene which causes the gallbladder in our bodies to periodically go out and try to kills us. Now it's my turn, and I couldn't be more thrilled.
No, really.
Back around this time last year, I suddenly started having trouble sleeping, on account of the fact that my stomach, once a trusted friend who could take anything I shoved down my gullet with a minimum of fuss (except Mexican food), started to...well, not hurt so much as make its presence felt, often at one in the morning, and abating only when I'd given up on getting that eight hours I felt I was entitled to.
I was in fear of it being something terrible (such as cancer, or an alien baby growing inside me. Neither option seemed attractive), but I was also in debt, and as the summer came around and I ate less in general due to the oppressive heat (hard to be hungry when it's 110 in the shade and you have to work in a sweaty place with questionable AC), the "attacks" as I dubbed them seemed to fade away.
Cue Christmas, when, among other things, I realized that maybe going back for seconds on that lasagna wasn't such a great idea. Gradually it became clear that, no matter what I tried (antacids, Pepto-Bismol, laxative, apple juice), all these were temporary solutions to what seemed to be a permenant problem. Finally, a few weeks ago I broke down and went to the doctor I'd seen about getting pills to take when I had my teeth worked on a few years back, because he's a general practicioner and he works with people who don't have health insurance (yours truly). I turned to him because, after a calm of two weeks, I endured probably the worst case of an "attack" after consuming two fried baloney sandwiches (which, in turn, turned me off baloney forever. I mean it, the thought of it makes me want to hurl). He surmised that it could be gallstones, but we wouldn' t know for sure until an ultrasound was performed.
Ultrasound? But doctor, I'm not pregnant!
Apparently they do those for gallstones, too, and as it turned out (my ticklish sides notwithstanding) it was a fairly easy thing to sit through as the tech scanned my side and stomach. The verdict that they gave me? Gallstones.
I plan to name them all "Mick" because they've got moves like Jagger.
In all seriousness, I'm relieved to finally have a diagnosis for my ills, and not one involving the "c" word. My well-meaning sister suggested I read Tuesdays With Morrie some time back, but the thing that stuck with me most was a description of Mitch Albom's uncle being in pain and "clutching his stomach" because pancreatic cancer was slowly killing him. Not sure I remember much after that passage, as I tried to both block it out with positive thought and let it overtake me with negative thought.
I've known people that had to deal with cancer; some of them licked it, some didn't. It's something to take very seriously. So I was happy to learn that, apart from a few cuts into my body to remove my gallbladder, I would be fine.
Wait, you want to cut into me?
Visions of various medical procedures in movies and TV that went horribly wrong flash thru my head on occasion (anyone who is familiar with the defibriliator scene in John Carpenter's The Thing or the chest-bursting scene in Alien can't take the idea of abdominal work lightly). But I read a really good biography of Humphrey Bogart over the weekend (Tough Without a Gun), and I think I can channel some of his world-weary nonchalance on the operating table and I'll be fine. I don't know when the cut date is (surgical consultation is tomorrow), but I look forward to getting it over with.
Because as my muse Kelly Clarkson might say, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Of course, I don't turn to Kelly for everything in my life, just decisions regarding major medical surgery.
Maybe I need a new muse.
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