wake up early, go to the radiologist for another sonogram of the gallbladder. this time they find a gallstone. ah ha. at least now i know there is a reason for the pain i feel. i headed back to my family practitioner and he, upon hearing about the gallstone, sends me for more tests at shady grove hospital. there they inject me with radioactive stuff and watch as it works it's way through my liver to my gallbladder and into the small bowel. execpt that it doesn't. it doesn't move beyond my gallbladder at all. a surgeon walks in and tells me that my doctor has asked him to check up on me. i'm in pain, i tell him. but it's not too bad. he takes a look at the radioactive stuff pooled in my gut and tells me the gallbladder has got to come out. ugh. ugh ugh ugh. when? it's not am emergency, he tells me. it can be done next week, and i don't have to miss my martial arts exam this saturday if i feel well enough to do it. the surgeon wants to see if he can get the gallbladder to function by injecting me with some hormone... so i get an IV inserted and a few minutes after the juice starts flowing into me the surgeon asks me how i feel.

OH MY GOD!

the biggest wave of nausea i've ever felt hits me, and i let him know that. i've never had nausea so bad that it made me cry. it was bad. fortunately i haven't injested anything but fruit smoothies in a long time... if i had eaten anything i'm sure the vomit would have been explosive and violent. then i started hurting a lot worse than i had been to that point. but on the plus side, it worked pretty quickly to move the radioactive stuff out of my gallbladder. getting everything out of there was apparently a good sign... i don't know if that positive result will preclude the need for surgery or not, but i sure hope so. i meet again with the surgeon tomorrow morning to find out for sure.

wish me luck.

afternoon

finally reached level 6! i am a Crafter! there is a picture on my homenode! tra la la!