Gall Blabber

Hmmm, it's been rather quiet around here on the Onederland blog front. For anyone wondering what they might have been missing this week in my life, here's a snapshot of what I've been talking about:

gall bladdergall bladdergall bladdergall bladdergall bladdergall bladdergall bladdergall bladdergall bladdergall bladdergall bladdergall bladdergall bladdergall bladdergall bladdergall bladdergall bladder.

Gall. Bladder.

In an effort to spare you all redundancies, I've avoided my blog this week. I am boring.

I sleep, dream, and eat gall bladder these days -- and that last one you can take literally, as I'm on the weirdest food intake plan of my life in an attempt to soothe the riled bile beast in my stomach.

Good news is -- you can't eat any fat when your gall bladder is angry. Bad news is, I probably still have to have surgery.

I'm subsisting on zero fat yogurt (with blueberries for breakkie, and cinnamon and nutmeg, delicious) and low-fat cottage cheese for lunch and dinner, with a few veggies and fruit bits thrown in for good measure.

I eat the same amount of calories as before the G.B. went ballistic, so I'm not drastically dropping weight. (You know that I secretly fantasized that I would, even tho the gallbladder has NOTHING to do with weight control/loss.)

The other positive in all this is that wine, thank the Ambrosia Goodness, has no fat. Praise be.

If it weren't for a few glasses of tannin and resin now and then, I'm pretty sure I'd be a calcified calcium deposit by now.

Doctor's appointment for Tuesday, with the surgeon, in which I fully expect to be told that we are on like bacon for a Da Vinci style laproscopic removal of the G.B. Will see if I can possibly milk a week off work for this.... another possible upside to this situation.

Truth is, even though I can seemingly control the worst of the tummy pain by avoiding fat as much as possible, that seems to be taking quite a toll. I am so tired all the time, and get fuzzy headed at the end of the day.

I have always read that healthy fats are truly essential for the body -- now I really understand what that means! Without them, the body just gets extremely tired ... I've suddenly sprouted insanely dark circles under my eyes.

Thanks everyone for the information, good cheer and good wishes! I'll be back soon.

Surgery

Against my heartfelt wishes, it looks like I'll be going under the knife.

After proving myself a miserable failure at a HIDA exam this Thursday (despite THREE attempts at getting radioactive dye into my gallbladder), my doctor decreed that there's a blockage in the duct between my liver and gallbladder.

A sonogram shows nothing, but the HIDA test was conclusive: the gallbladder is not getting any bile from the liver (meaning it's backing up and slowly giving me jaundice, which makes me feel like I'm a W. Somerset Maugham short story).

The docs want to rip my poor, inoffensive, and otherwise un-inflamed gallbladder out because this one nasty duct has gone rogue. I don't quite see the point, but also realize it would be unwise to continue to irritate my liver.

I'm very unhappy at having this situation imposed upon me; I'll admit to being vain over my general heartiness and good health. This makes me feel like I've failed in some way.

It would be nice to ignore the doctors and symptoms and pretend this is nothing, but I'm in near-constant pain on my right side. Not bad, but .... ever-present. It will only get worse, I know.

There's nothing for it but to grit my teeth, get a second-opinion out of general common sense, and then submit to the obvious. I am feeling rundown in a way I've never felt before, tired and draggy. My skin is dull, my hair kind of flat. In short, I'm far from my normal self.

I hate the idea of surgery, even laproscopic, and really hate that I'm still so big and having to deal with doctors. ( I feel like they are all judging me and blaming me for my health problem because I'm overweight, even if they don't say anything directly to me).

Eating is all kinds of weird b/c of the gallbladder situation, but I'd say it's .... well, it's ok. I probably am eating a bit more than I should (the ache increases when I get hungry, to very painful levels), but am making good choices. Still, it's calories at the end of the day that count.

I've been warned by my docs about a low-fat diet, which I bristled at because really, how do they know I don't already follow a low-fat diet? I get quite paranoid and touchy around doctors, don't I?