How to Neglect a Blog, Part 3: Have your health fall apart

Not the best of news today -- which is why I'm blogging it. This blog is solely for me; no one else looks at it, and I do need something to jog my memory in time to come. My health is plummeting again. The doctor's appointment was made this morning, but the earliest time we could get was 13 days from now, and I actually doubt I'll make it that long. I rather think I'll be at the ER long before I get to that point. 

The problem is essentially identical to the drama in 2017, not long after Mom passed away, when I landed in hospital for two surgeries. I have the same pain I had when the gallstones were giving me a massively inflamed liver, which triggered pancreatitis. But since they took out the gallbladder, how is it possible to have the same trouble?! 

So I looked it up -- let Ma Google be your friend. And imagine my surprise.

It turns out that 15% -- yes, one in seven! -- people who have their gallbladder removed continue to get stones. The stones just form in the bile ducts instead, and find their way into the liver and into the ducts to the pancreas; and when they block those ducts -- well, this explains much. It certainly explains why I can't digest worth a damn; why I have pain right through the middle; and so on.

For the last week, I've been treating this thing as if it were gastritis (caused by Ibuprofen ... I don't drink, never did, but I've taken loads of Ibuprofen for 35 years. I wouldn't have been surprised to find out the stuff had given me gastritis, and the symptoms are the same). But it it were gastritis, it should have healed itself and settled down by now, right? 

No joy. If fact, the pain is worse than ever. So the phone call was made, and the rotten news is that "See your GP promptly" is a meaningless phrase. You can't get an appointment for almost two weeks. See a GP promptly --?? That might work, but there's very few I trust, and trusting strangers isn't in my nature. So I've decided to wait, and just not eat, and see the one I do trust, when I can. Hmmm.

Two weeks. Who knows? The situation might have calmed down, given that much longer of resting the whole system. I doubt it, but we can do this. I'm not going to fall dead for want of a few dozen meals! God knows, I might even lose a few pounds (though I doubt that, too: weight loss does not happen for me). So, what nutrition can we get, when we can't eat?

This is a puzzle, especially when you remember to strike off the list all the migraine triggers. I've just completed one of the biggest, nastiest migraines I've ever had, probably triggered by a small amount of orange juice (I though I could get away with it, and was wrong), and the wild, whackadoodle camera work of J.J. Abrams, which is -- for me -- sudden death. It was Mission Impossible 3, and even closing my eyes didn't help. Maybe I didn't get them closed in time? Whatever. The last movie that did this to me was another Tom Cruise film, Edge of Tomorrow, which is a fantastic movie and -- for me -- sudden death. So ... food???

Fruit juices, unsweetened almond milk, acai powder, vegetable greens powder, beetroot powder, turmeric; an occasional dry, plain cracker; a half-serve of rice bubbles with stevia; a spoonful of low-fat yogurt; lots of rooibos tea. And that's about it --

Needless to say, the next two weeks are looking like two years, and my brain will barely be functioning. Your brain needs feeding, it won't run without fuel any more than the rest of your body will run without fuel. But I'm going to have to find a way to run on next to nothing until I get a diagnosis, and see what I dare eat, without risking blowing up pancreas right up!

And before we get to any such diagnosis, it's going to mean a lot of tests. Blood work, for a start; ultrasound and/or CT scan? Okay. That should show the problem. 

If it's not more stones, what is it? And what's to be done about it?

These are different questions, and at this moment I'm not going to speculate. Suffice to say, I feel very weird, with my brain starving and my body trying to tumble into sleep for want of fuel. I'm also getting over one of the worst migraines in my personal history -- the full on deal, complete with hypothermia, shaking, tingling extremities, vomiting, and the skull tearing itself apart. And remember to add to this lumbago, hip bursitis, probable arthritis in my left ankle bone, scoliosis in the top of the spine. 

How to neglect a blog royally? Have your health fall apart. 

So, more and more, this is becoming a photo blog as this wretched year, 2020, wears away, and you wonder what else it can do! And it's "over and out" from me, for a while, unless something significant happens. Such as, a spontaneous recovery (ha!), or a diagnosis of something easy to fix, or a really good sale of a story to a terrific marketplace. One lives in hopes. 

The MRI Experience ... Part One: Before

The scan is booked for 2:30 this afternoon, and this morning I find myself ... hyper. Couldn't tell you why, because an MRI is absolutely UN-invasive, and the worst you can say for the experience is, it's noisy. They might or might not offer ear protection, so I'm taking my own. They put little kids in MRI machines, fagodsakes, and although I have a couple of phobias, I know I'm not claustrophobic, so...

...so why am I antsy? Probably because of what the scan might reveal, I suppose. For those coming in late, I've been having headaches every day since December 4 last year -- makes over seven months of daily headaches, 95% of them in the same place. Plus an assortment of other symptoms that make an MRI a good idea: make sure there ain't something in this noggin that ought to be taken care of at once, if not sooner (though, seven months after the pain began really doesn't constitute "at once").

The scan isn't what bothers me, honestly. It's the thought of the allopathic treatments to follow, if it turns out there is something in there. All the radio and chemo. Or -- as my father suffered -- the surgery. It's over 30 years since Dad had a brain tumor following lung cancer. By 2000, medicine knew enough that if someone has lung cancer, the next thing they do is scan his/her brain, because that's where cancer metastasizes next.

1985 or so, Dad was lucky -- the tumor was on the outside of his brain, left-hand-side. The surgery was simple: cut a horseshoe-shaped flap of his scalp, take out a disk of bone, lift out the tumor (described to me at the time as exactly like  "lifting an apple out of jelly"), put the disk of bone back into place with gold wire; replace the flap of skin, suture, dress, and ... done. They didn't follow up with any chemo or radio, and he lived 16 years after the surgery before succumbing to  congestive heart failure which was the result of running on one lung for 18 years.

Maybe memories of what Dad went through are making me antsy.

But I find myself hyper this morning. I've been cleaning the house for three hours, and am making myself stop, because I have a headache (duh), and don't feel too good. Exhausting myself will achieve nothing. In fact, it's a daft thing to do.

So here I am blogging about it, to thrash out what I think that I think...

And I think it's this: I usually hate allopathic treatments, drugs and whatnot. Last Christmas, a problem blew up with my gallbladder, and the best orthodox medicine could do was offer to take out my gallbladder in -- oh, a year or two, or three: there's a loooong waiting list for this surgery, since you don't count as an emergency, even though you're in pain.

I didn't want that, so I researched alternative treatments, and by our wedding anniversary dinner in March I was cured. We went out to celebrate the day, and I put the cure to the test by eating fish and chips and cheesecake. No pain; no nothing from the gallbladder. Fixed.

So I think I'm antsy about the MRI, not because I'm anxious regarding the scan itself, but because the thought of all those potential drugs and treatments is getting under my skin like glass powder. Makes your adrenalin pump.

So: calm down, Jen. Do your Taoist breathing exercises. Take some Ashwaganda.

And blog about the actual scan later, when it's been done.