Heavy

I had an appointment with my primary care provider, Dr. F today to touch base on all of the fun medical stuff going on with me (tl;dr -- 4 months of pain underneath my right ribs, reflux, vomiting, etc.).  

She reaffirmed that I'm doing everything as I should be doing, but that I might be one of those "medical mysteries" that you read about in the Post.  In other words, multiple doctors have run all the standard diagnostics (blood, CT, ultrasound) for the most likely causes for the pain (friggin gallbladder), but they're not yet able to explain why I am in pain.  Doctors even did the next level of testing (HIDA, EGD endoscopy, gastric emptying study) and couldn't find a cause for everything going on (just confirmed some symptoms).  So we're moving into more focused tests (abdominal MRI (Jan. 13), endoscopic ultrasound (Jan. 25)).  We briefly discussed the possibility of needing surgery down the line to help with a diagnosis.

It could still be my gallbladder, could be a Sphincter of Oddi dysfunction, it could be an alien just biding his time in my gut before he breaks out in song, it could be (though unlikely) a muscle tear in my side. 

One moment that kind of took me by surprise was the concerned face she made when we talked about my losing weight.  She knows that this number represents 2 months of throwing up (September/October) and 4 months (September–present) being skittish around food and not exercising.  She knows that I haven't been taking vitamins, feel really weak/tired because I'm not eating enough calories, and that generally I feel like shit.  She'd rather me weigh more and feel better than to see the scale go down and me feel so broken.

In other fun news, based on my blood work/pap smear at my annual obgyn exam, I got to have a colposcopy on 12/23.  They took two cervical biopsies. I got the results back today and.... benign squamous epithelial cells. So we'll keep an eye on that going forward, but a little good news today.