You're not cool unless you pee your pants

I had my ct scan today. The news was good, in that there was nothing bad to report. Since all this stomach stuff started, I kept thinking about my grandmother, who died of pancreatic cancer, and how she kept saying that she felt fine as long as she didn't eat. When I realized I was in a similar situation, I couldn't help but wonder if I was yet again going to defy the statistics. The rational part of me was saying I was overreacting, but when you have pain like that, you just know something's WRONG.

Dr. GI was so nice today. Normally, when you have a test like this done, the radiologist reviews the pictures, writes a report & the doctor reads it and his or her nurse calls you with information. Instead, Dr. GI told the scan tech to tell him as soon as I was done, and he came and reviewed the scans himself while I was still on the table. He was able to say right away that he didn't see anything that wasn't supposed to be there, and that while the bile duct is dilated, it isn't the size of a baby's arm or anything, and there's no boulders in there. And, my liver enzymes aren't elevated...sooooo....no clear cut reason for the stabbing pain of death three weeks ago and continuing tenderness and random pain.

He gave me three options: do nothing, and hope it never happens again; do an ERCP (Endoscopic Retrograde Cholangiopancreatography), which is essentially a scope inserted all the way through the stomach & into the duct itself; or a MRCP (Magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography), which is an MRI of the area. I was not a fan of the do nothing option, because frankly, I don't like the idea of surprise stabbing pain of death and the likelihood of the pain returning is high. The glitch to going ahead with the ERCP is that it sometimes triggers pancreatitis. Pancreatitis is B-A-D. As in, several days in the hospital on IV nutrition because you must have total digestive rest BAD. As in, eating no fat and no spice for extended periods of time bad. I would love to be thin, but I'd rather just go bulimic than do the pancreatitis weight loss plan. The risk with the ERCP is increased if you aren't sure what's there. So, we decided to go with the MRCP, because it will rule out several things that might take ERCP off the table. It's scheduled for the 19th.

In the meantime, tomorrow morning I meet with the OB/GYN, and I'm optimistic she will be able to say that I'm well on my way to my body realizing I am indeed, no longer pregnant. They measure this with beta HCG levels, and mine finally dropped after the methotrexate shot, in the first blood draw, so I'm hopeful that today's blood draw will continue to show good results and we won't have to worry about having another injection (which would have sent me into a fit of sobbing) or surgery (which would also have sent me into a fit of sobbing).

I know I haven't fully processed the miscarriage. For one thing, I only knew I was pregnant for two days before I started miscarrying. And I knew the odds were extremely unlikely that it was viable, even without knowing it was ectopic. And I know the timing for a pregnancy now would not be ideal - Declan is still nursing and I have my hands full with two energetic little boys. But, it's like when you're sitting there, and someone hands you a wonderful piece of candy. You weren't hungry, you weren't even wanting candy, but once you have a bite, and then they take it away, you miss it. That's the best explanation I have. And that has me confused. We had been fairly sure we were done having children, given our advancing age and decreasing financial resources. But now I'm thinking about that candy.

For now, we all have some mental peace. (Or as close as people like us come to peace.) And if you're curious about my title - one of the "side effects" of ct-scans done with contrast and intravenous dye is a sensation of liquid warmth spreading throughout the pelvic area. Yep, it's exactly like what it would feel like if you peed your pants. Weirdest thing ever.

P.S. This deserves and perhaps will get an entry of its own, but the universe has shown me ten times over how blessed I am with love from my family of friends. So many of you have written me privately and publicly, and prayed for me and thought positive thoughts and even brought me dinner or watched my kids. I cannot tell you how much it means to me. We may be eating beans and rice once these medical bills roll in, but I am rich in friendship, which is worth so much more. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

System Failure (or, what's wrong with me?)

So, the last three weeks have been long ones. A lot of you know part of a the story, a lot of you haven't heard, a lot of you don't care and a few know bits and pieces. The short version is, I've been sick, and we know one of the reasons why, and are trying to find out the other. Here's the long version:

On May 17th, I started having abdominal pain. Nothing major, just some discomfort. It seemed better or worse depending on how I sat or stood, but wasn't really impacting life too much. Sean and I went to a movie. We put the kids to bed and we went to bed. Then things started intensifying and I spent most of the night up and down, hurting. By 5 am I knew something was wrong and woke Sean at 6:30 to tell him he needed to help me get Cian ready for school and then we had to get to a doctor, quickly. The pain feels just like when I had a gall bladder attack, except that I don't have a gall bladder anymore. That left the premises two years ago.

Cian's teacher, Amanda, was a blessing and when I texted her to see how early Cian could come to school, she told us to go ahead and bring him and she would watch him. Declan's godmother, Rhonda, agreed to watch Declan, so Sean went off with Cian and got a shower and then took Declan down to Rhonda. At this point, the pain was so bad I could barely get Declan into the carseat. Sean and I then met at the emergency room.

Six hours later, we had not one but two diagnoses: the "doctor" (more on that in a minute) decided that since I had nothing out of the ordinary on my xrays or labs, that I had a duodenal ulcer. And oh, by the way, you're pregnant. (at which point the room was rather pregnant with the stunned silence of two people who thought they'd had a hallucination.)

Because, see, I had an IUD. A Mirena, to be exact. And the failure rate? Two tenths of one percent. And in a 35 yr old woman with polycystic ovaries, a history of infertility, and still breastfeeding a 13 month old? But, nonetheless, pregnant. And scared. Because as soon as the guy leaves the room, I start Googling and realize that Mirena pregnancies are a big deal. High likelihood of ectopic. Fifty percent miscarriage rate. Guy comes back in the room, and I ask for an ultrasound, because I'm concerned about tubal rupture. He thinks it's unnecessary and tells me that I'll have to wait hours. He makes it clear the pregnancy isn't his problem and he's diagnosed the other and now we need to leave. (Turns out he was a Physician Assistant, which annoys me, and that he made several very bad decisions about my care. I'm really hoping I get a survey from the hospital asking about my experience.)

The next day, I saw my OB, who announced that I was her first patient to EVER have a Mirena failure. She pulled the IUD and sent me back to the hospital for the ultrasound I wanted to begin with. The radiologist there says he can't tell yet if there's implantation and where, but he does note he can see the IUD, which is pretty amazing considering it had already been removed. This further convinces me that the hospital is trying to kill me.

So, the day after that, I start bleeding and it becomes pretty clear I'm having a miscarriage. The OB's office is having bloodwork done, and the HCG level (which is supposed to double every 48 hours) is rising initially, though not as much as we'd like, and then after I start bleeding, it falls. So we know it was a miscarriage. But then, a glitch. Because after 2 weeks, I'm still feeling crappy - cramping and nausea. OB orders another ultrasound and they see a mass in my right ovary. Could be a cyst, could be the remains of the pregnancy. (And, just in case you're keeping track - 95 percent of ectopic pregnancies are tubal, not ovarian. So here's another set of ridiculous odds.) We wait until the next day (June 2) and find out that my HCG hasn't dropped at all, which makes the likelihood of ectopic very high. I'm given two options: an injection of a chemotherapy drug, methotrexate, which will dissolve the mass so it can pass, or abdominal surgery, which has a high likelihood of causing a loss of the tube and/or ovary.

I opted for the shot. Got it that day. Had some nausea in the evening, with some very light bleeding, and then I start having abdominal pain. Again, Except, it's not going away, it's getting worse. By Saturday, it's bad enough that I called the OB. She's concerned about internal bleeding, but after a while, the pain gets better and I figure it's just side effects of the shot. Sunday, same thing happens again, except even worse. I am so miserable and realize that the only way I can keep from hurting is to not eat, which doesn't seem right, so I go to our urgent care center.

I got a great doctor at the urgent care center who quickly ran some labs to rule out pancreatitis and a couple other things, and then gives me a long talk about advocating for myself because something is wrong and he believes it's completely irrelevant to the pregnancy. There's not much he can do for me, except tell me to stay on liquids and give me a high potency acid blocker, but tells me to insist on a ct scan and that they find out what's causing the abdominal pain.

So, yesterday, that's what I did. I called a friend and parishioner who is a GI doctor and he got me right in and everyone seems to agree that something is not right. Dr. GI believes I have a dilated bile duct, most likely because there is a stone or blockage there. He ordered some bloodwork and the ct scan, which I will have tomorrow afternoon. In the meantime, I have another blood draw tomorrow for the ectopic pregnancy, plus an appointment Thursday with the OB to hear if she thinks the methotrexate did the job. If it didn't, I have to have another shot. Which I can hardly bear to consider, given what I've been through in the past week.

Also, I hope the CT scan will shut down the little voice inside my head that's worrying about pancreatic cancer. My grandmother died from it, and the symptoms are pretty broad, but I have virtually every one. The CT scan should rule that out, even if it doesn't do a good job showing the bile duct. If Dr. GI doesn't get a good enough view of the duct, then I'll likely have an MRI.

The good news is that after 24 hours on liquids, I felt well enough last night to eat some pasta and have not had the terrible pain. The area is still tender to the touch, but none of the crippling abdominal pains from before. So I'm grateful for that. I'm trying to be very careful to eat fairly bland foods and small amounts, lest I start something again.

So, there's you have it. Two major medical problems happening simultaneously, confusing everyone and myself, and making it difficult to sort out. I'm beginning to think I need to play the lottery, with the ridiculous odds of all this, but since my odds seem to all be in the negative category, I should probably not bother.

We Still Don't Get It

I've been watching the news a lot lately, taking in the varied reactions to the stimulus bill and foreclosure crisis response. Overwhelmingly, my thought is that some people STILL don't get it. I say this not because I think either proposal is perfect; no legislation is able to help everyone or fix every problem. However, it's more than was done before Obama took office, when maybe things could have been different if people up top had noticed a year ago that things were tanking, rather than sticking their heads in the sand. But still, what strikes me most is the nasty, bitter comments people are making about "mortgage bailouts" and "supporting the NEA" and "entitlement spending."

We are where we are because of greed, plain and simple. Greed of investors, greed of corporations and their CEOs, greed of stock traders and even personal greed, where people bought houses they couldn't afford because they thought they could sell them quickly and turn a profit in a skyrocketing housing market. But make no mistake about it: resenting legislation that will help a legitimately needy family refinance a shady mortgage, or griping about people receiving food stamps or extended unemployment, or thinking that an artist doesn't actually "work" - that's greed, too. A selfish greed. The kind of greed that says, "I deserve what I have but you don't."

It's not the attitude of a country that has accepted the realities of its behavior or that the lack of oversight and regulation was probably the greatest single contributor to every problem we face. You're mad that people overinflated their income on mortgage applications? What about the broker who TOLD them to do so? What about the fact that no one checked the numbers? They didn't care because they knew they weren't keeping the loans. You resent stimulus money being spent for NEA grants? Artists are hurting right now, just like factory workers. People don't buy art when they are struggling to pay bills. And yet, do we want to live in a world without art, without music, without the written word? All the things that separate us from being just another animal on the planet? And are you really complaining about someone needing assistance to EAT?

I get particularly frustrated with people who consider themselves Christian who have harsh words for government/taxpayer assistance for people. Consider this: "Carry each other's burdens and in this way fulfill the law of Christ." (Galatians 6:2) We are compelled by our commitment of faith to love each other as we love ourselves.

I have to imagine that greed causes more suffering than any other fault we humans espouse. After all, what is lust but greed for another person? Our love of money, our love of things, our love of ourselves has corrupted the corporate world and it threatens to blacken each of us when we put ourselves above all else. How are we any better than that CEO who earned 67 million dollars last year while his company imploded? We aren't. We're just able to hide it better...for now.

The "Aluminum" Anniversary

Today is our 10th wedding anniversary. We have been together 11 years, and known each other a little over 12 years. When I looked up traditional anniversary gifts by years, #10 is "tin or aluminum". Huh. Wonder what, back in the day, was a nice something you would give someone made with tin or aluminum? A new lantern? A pie pan? Nowadays, what comes to mind is a soda can - not the height of romance or even remotely suggestive of permanence. Most people think "recycling" when they hear the word "aluminum", don't they?

Anyway, times change. I'm proud we've made it to 10. Not everyone does. My parents divorced when I was about 4, and my mother never remarried, so I didn't have any real idea of functional marriage. My grandparents, sure, but by the time you're old enough to notice your grandparents interacting with each other, they are WAY past arguing about who's going to put out the trash. My dad remarried, but I didn't live with them. In growing up, more of my friends had divorced parents than intact families. So in some ways, I think a lot of people my age are making this up as they go along, with varying degrees of success but a real desire to not be another statistic.

I was not one of those girls who dreamed about their wedding day and in fact I found the whole planning process pretty exhausting. We had a wonderful wedding, full of friends and family, with a really fun reception in a Mardi Gras theme. We didn't spend all that much money, because we didn't have much money. Afterwards, I told Sean if there was any reason to stay married, it was the thought that I might have to go through another wedding in my life. I much prefer the marriage part.

Now we have two little boys as testament of this shared life. Sean and I were not always certain we would have children. One of the most compelling reasons for me was a desire to allow our shared life to continue on, in some fashion. This was sort of a vague notion until the death of a dear friend clarified the wish into something more compelling. She and her husband had shared a wonderful life together, with more adventures than you could imagine, but they had never wanted children. Her sudden death from a stroke made me ache for her husband, that he could have had someone to remember with him, and later, to remember for him. I truly doubt he feels this way, but I knew that I would.

And so, ten years, four cities, and two kids later, here we are. I love you, Sean. I'm proud of you and the person you are. Thank you for loving me and giving me these two beautiful boys. You have been a wonderful person to take along on this life's adventure.

Found A Peanut

Remember that song, Found a Peanut? Where you find it, eat it, it was rotten, got sick, called the doctor, died anyway? Yeah. Who knew it could be a morality lesson?

At least 8 people dead, hundreds sickened, from salmonella-tainted peanut butter that was distributed to manufacturers of everything from toddlers nutrition bars to ice cream. And now, the worst news of all: it should have come as no surprise to the owners and management of the plant in Georgia, because they not only knew their plant was riddled with salmonella (among other things), they actively tried to sell the paste they made that they knew was contaminated. Aside from there being a special place in hell reserved for those folks, there is now a call for a criminal investigation into the plant. At the minimum, these people deserve to be charged with negligent homicide for the people who died.

It's time for us to remember our past: Upton Sinclair wrote a book in 1906 that exposed the meat packing industry in our country, The Jungle . At that time, the conditions within the plants themselves, the sanitation of the meat, and the treatment of the workers themselves were all beyond today's ability to comprehend. Rotten meat was sometimes dyed red and sold to unsuspecting customers, the filth was unchecked, and no one was paying attention. The publication of his book led to legislation requiring sanitary conditions in factories and also led to great reforms within the labor movement.

Currently, the FDA has no ability to shut down manufacturers who do not meet minimum cleanliness standards. That needs to change, immediately. If a city can padlock the doors on a restaurant for unsafe food conditions, why can't the FDA? They have no ability to call for mandatory recalls of unsafe products, either, though mostly producers agree because the liability is so high once word gets out.

It is incredible to me that we can no longer even feel safe about purchasing peanut butter for our children without the fear that it could have a bacteria that comes from animal's intestinal tract. One of the products affected by the voluntary recall was labeled "organic". I guess, if you count poop, mold and deadly bacteria as an organic substances. We can't rely on manufacturers to police themselves, no more than we can rely on Wall Street, mondo corporations and lenders to do so. And frankly, there's no better place to start than the safety of the food supply.

As an aside, this whole food chain supply issue is a large reason why our family subscribes to a CSA farm. The bulk of the meat and eggs we eat is from the farm: pasture-fed beef, heirloom pork, and truly free range chicken and eggs. Nutritionally, these products are far superior to what is sold in the grocery store - "elevated concentrations of beta-carotene and a-tocopherol, increased levels of omega-3 fatty acids, a more desirable omega-3:omega-6 ratio, and increased levels of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA)". The theory suggests that in part the conversion from family farm to factory farm has contributed significantly to heart disease in this country because the natural sources of these critical fatty acids have evaporated.

An old friend once told me he became a vegan after reading The Jungle in junior high. Read if for yourself, and while I don't advocate veganism (because it's twigs and berries and life is too short for that), it wouldn't hurt for you to think about where you food is coming from and, more importantly, where it's been.

My Inaugural Entry

At the suggestion of some Facebook friends, I have created an outlet for my frequent opinions, occasional outrages, and general observations. I wrote a weekly opinion column for several years in college - it will be interesting to see if I can keep this up with any degree of regularity.

Today was, well, filled with new experiences. But not like skydiving or trying sushi- more like, getting a catheter or contracting e coli. I had both kids home all day, due to ice and snow, and Declan (the baby) became an opportunist.

While I was putting Cian (the 3-yr-old) down for a theoretical nap/forced confinement, Declan moved some barricades around the end table and nabbed my Starbucks-Venti-Iced-Mocha-8 pumps-Light Ice-Whole Milk-With Whip and poured it all over himself and the floor. I found him in a puddle on the hardwood floor, sucking the end of the straw and licking his hands joyfully.

After I stripped him down, I put him in San Quentin Playpen and started mopping. A couple of minutes later, I notice something large and green hanging out of Declan's mouth: GAH! It's the toy lizard Cian got at Chuck E. Cheese on Friday with the babysitter - one of those squeezy, bulgy things that seems to stretch endlessly. It does, however, have a weakness: baby fangs. Declan had punctured it, and fluid was leaking out of it. Panic ensues, poison control is called, pediatrician is called, nurse practitioner friend gets cornered when she makes the mistake of calling during aforementioned panic. And before you roll your eyes at my panic, let me say: the thing was made in CHINA. Yes, home of melamine formula, toxic paint and lead filled jewelry.

As an aside, poison control was pretty worthless. I sort of expect more from a trained professional than, "Well, we don't know what's in it. Just watch him." Oh, I feel so much better now. Thanks for the game plan.

I've never had to call poison control before, since Cian has never been one to eat random objects. Declan, on the other hand, thinks anything can be food if it can fit in his mouth. He ate an entire business card last month...nothing left but a teensy soggy crumb. I foresee lots of calls to poison control in the years to come, in spite of their underwhelming performance today.

All's well that ends well, I suppose. Someone told me one time that as a stay at home mom of little children, my sole responsibility was to have living children at the end of each day. In that respect, today was successful. It's small praise, but I'll take it.