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Dec. 15th, 2010 04:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stitchwhichSaw the surgeon. No date for the surgery yet as I have to do another CT scan first for some 'fine tuning' of the surgical plan.
The surgeon was full of information and even better, not a smidgen of condescension was shown to me (rare, in this area, for first-time meetings). He pulled up the video of my August CAT scan to show me what was going on - and boy, if I had been thinking I wasn't going to have my gallbladder removed, that was quickly reversed. I'm growing a Liz Taylor-sized necklace in there. If she wore pearls rather than diamonds. Wow. Yeah - - - "you'rrrrrrre outta there!" My gallbladder looked like a partially-empty candy dispenser. I'm pretty sure it wasn't supposed to be looking like that. And apparently, I've been creating those little marbles for a while. A symptom he asked me about, which I've been really bothered by for almost a decade, turns out to have been a BIG indicator for gallbladder disease. So I am one lucky cookie because I've avoided an emergency surgery and not had any major difficult until just lately. Hey - I wonder if they'll let me keep those things? I mean... it'd be kinda grossly fun to see if I could drill a few and put them on my Viking-swag necklace, if they really do look like the marbles they resemble in the CAT scan. They are, in fact, hard balls of calcium. Take that, Osteoporosis! I've got so much extra I'm doing craft projects with it!
The hangup is the thingy growing from/through my stomach wall. Ya know, that sucker is BIG! Slightly smaller than a standard light bulb. Which, for the category of "things growing inside that weren't designed to be there" is big. The delay about getting it out comes from its location - it is growing from the stomach wall and is a part of that wall, then it bulges out (the 'bulb' part) towards the liver and is actually causing a bit of a concave dent in the liver itself. And it is slightly hollow and seems to contain blood inside. What they cannot determine is A) if it had ruptured and that's why it had blood on the inside, thus it may be smaller now than it was in August or B) if the bulb-side is adhered to the liver and is involving it or not.
Both A & B will determine the difference between going after it lapiscopically or with a full surgical slice. And thus the new CAT scan.
What we do know, within an acceptable level of certainty, is that it is not cancerous, not life threatening, and will entail a 1 - 3 day hospital recovery stay. And that we'll be waiting until after the New year to do that.
The surgeon was full of information and even better, not a smidgen of condescension was shown to me (rare, in this area, for first-time meetings). He pulled up the video of my August CAT scan to show me what was going on - and boy, if I had been thinking I wasn't going to have my gallbladder removed, that was quickly reversed. I'm growing a Liz Taylor-sized necklace in there. If she wore pearls rather than diamonds. Wow. Yeah - - - "you'rrrrrrre outta there!" My gallbladder looked like a partially-empty candy dispenser. I'm pretty sure it wasn't supposed to be looking like that. And apparently, I've been creating those little marbles for a while. A symptom he asked me about, which I've been really bothered by for almost a decade, turns out to have been a BIG indicator for gallbladder disease. So I am one lucky cookie because I've avoided an emergency surgery and not had any major difficult until just lately. Hey - I wonder if they'll let me keep those things? I mean... it'd be kinda grossly fun to see if I could drill a few and put them on my Viking-swag necklace, if they really do look like the marbles they resemble in the CAT scan. They are, in fact, hard balls of calcium. Take that, Osteoporosis! I've got so much extra I'm doing craft projects with it!
The hangup is the thingy growing from/through my stomach wall. Ya know, that sucker is BIG! Slightly smaller than a standard light bulb. Which, for the category of "things growing inside that weren't designed to be there" is big. The delay about getting it out comes from its location - it is growing from the stomach wall and is a part of that wall, then it bulges out (the 'bulb' part) towards the liver and is actually causing a bit of a concave dent in the liver itself. And it is slightly hollow and seems to contain blood inside. What they cannot determine is A) if it had ruptured and that's why it had blood on the inside, thus it may be smaller now than it was in August or B) if the bulb-side is adhered to the liver and is involving it or not.
Both A & B will determine the difference between going after it lapiscopically or with a full surgical slice. And thus the new CAT scan.
What we do know, within an acceptable level of certainty, is that it is not cancerous, not life threatening, and will entail a 1 - 3 day hospital recovery stay. And that we'll be waiting until after the New year to do that.
