It's one of those days when I wish Dr House was a real person, and that he was a close friend of mine. I am not sure we have any more answers tonight than we had when last I wrote. The endoscopy is over, and I was cleared to resume my huge stack of medications and encouraged to eat whatever I felt up to (after starting with something bland as a tester). Now, at the end of the night, I don't know what to do.
I woke early this morning, so that I could have a few sips of water, in the hope that it would plump up my veins enough to make insertion of an IV easier. (Turns out that hope was in vain, but I'm not one for puns, so pretend I didn't say that.) I didn't want to sit and watch the seconds tick on the clock until time to go in, so I crawled back into bed and napped off and on until about eleven. It worked on two levels. It made time pass more quickly, and it helped me forget how much I hurt for a few hours. I showered, braided my wet hair, and chose soft, stretchy clothes for the day. And then I sat and waited for the Mr to come home and drive me to the surgery center. What excitement.
The staff at the surgery center was younger and cooler than I expected. Maybe I'm just getting old. I felt like the oldest person in the building. But they were all as nice and friendly and reassuring as could be. That helped, because I had let myself get very nervous about what was going to happen today. They settled me in a curtained room, and tried twice to put in an IV. It hurt like hell both times, but at least the second one went in far enough to work. The nurse wrapped a warm pad around the insertion site on my forearm, in an effort to soothe and relax it. It sort of worked. The anaesthesiologist and gastroenterologist who would run the procedure both chatted with me, and then I was rolled in. The mood in the room was jocular and humorous, and they had me roll over on my side just as the burning anaesthsia went into my IV. I had a lovely dream about making real estate deals (really!) and then I was being talked to in the recovery side of the curtain room. The doctor showed me a series of nine photographs from the inside, and pointed out the parts where he took biopsies. He said the pathology would take about two or three weeks, and then his office would call and have me come in and discuss the results.
And that's when my heart broke.
Three weeks for an answer. I have gotten dramatically worse in the last five days. I feel like there is something on the outside of my rib cage, just below my breasts, pushing up and squeezing in at the same time. It feels dangerous. Like I ought to be planning a trip to an ER. But it's been doing this for quite a while, and I've had three medical exams since it started hurting all the time. No one knows anything yet. It doesn't appear to be my liver or my upper GI from the inside. I don't know what this is, and I don't know what to do or who to ask next.
I came home, ate some quinoa noodles, and then I crawled back in bed. I slept for hours. I am still tired. I can feel all the places where he snipped out tissue, and it feels like a punch in the solar plexus (or several). I checked to see whether I had a fever while I was napping, and I didn't. I was more surprised than I should have been that I didn't. I've been out of bed for about three hours, and I'm fairly certain I'll be back there in about twenty minutes.
I wish someone would say, "Oh, this happened to a friend of mine. It turned out to be (this)" just so that I could have an answer. Greg House would be able to figure it out. Is there a Dr House in the house?
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