11/17/2011 Today is the big day. I am sitting here waiting in the GI doctor's waiting room, not really sure what is going to happen at this appointment. Not much, I fear, for this is only a consultation appointment in preparation for something in the future. In reality, I am tired of waiting, tired of being in pain, tired of not knowing what is wrong with me. Fortunately, during my long wait for this appointment, I have learned some very good coping mechanisms beside taking pain medications for controlling the stomach discomfort and pain thanks to the wonderful 4 day hypnosis training that I had with my brother-in-law, Phil La Puma. It is amazing how much control we have over our bodies just through the power of our mind. I have been able to help some of my family and friends with hypnosis as well since my training class and have always received positive results. But I digress.
I am finally called back into the examining room where I am weighed. I point out that I have lost about 4 pounds without trying within the last 2-3 weeks, but there doesn't seem to be much interest in what I am saying. I get seated in the exam room and wait for another 20 minutes. At this point I am getting concerned because I have my radiology appointment scheduled right after the GI appointment, so I go out to ask about seeing the doctor. Fortunately, she was on her way into the exam room.
I don't know that the doctor and I hit it off very well. It seems as if the doctor was irritated that I was not on her time schedule. That maybe her time was more valuable than mine, and to tell you the truth, this kind of irritated me. I try to explain to the doctor that I have another appointment scheduled after my appointment with her and then I start to explain what has been going on with my stomach, the two visits to the emergency room for the extreme pain, the feeling similar to having a blocked intestine that I had had in 2006, and the fact that I am still in pain two months later. The doctor had me lay back on the exam table, where she poked and prodded my stomach and I told her where the pain was, basically where my stomach pouch is from my gastric bypass surgery and down the left side of my abdomen where my colon is. She has me sit up and before I can finish telling her what other symptoms I have been experiencing, she pronounces my illness to be IBS-irritable bowel syndrome.
Now, I am in a state of shock. I have been diagnosed with IBS before, and it has never felt like this. I try to explain this to Dr. B. but she quickly poo poo's me and says that IBS can make you feel like you are going to die, but there is really nothing they can do for it but give you medications to control the spasms, which she prescribed and sent to the Kaiser Folsom Pharmacy. Then Dr. B says she will schedule a lower GI for me because I did manage to explain to her that I had had some bleeding. I also told her that my gastric bypass surgeon also wanted an upper GI done, much to her chagrin, since she firmly believes that there is nothing wrong with my stomach, but since I would be under sedation anyway, Dr. B. agreed to do an upper GI as well. The appointment for the GI's were set up for December 13, 2011.
I left that appointment feeling defeated and ignored. On the one hand, I guess I had an answer to what had been bothering me over the past two months, but on the other hand, it was not an answer that I agreed with. I felt that I was being pushed under the rug, ignored, left to fate to deal with whatever consequences my stomach would mete out to me at least until December 13th anyway. But now, I had to focus my attention on a different part of my body and go to my radiology appointment.
The radiology department was downstairs from the GI department, and I arrived with barely 5 minutes to spare. As I checked in, I started crying out of fear of what they might find in the mammogram. I knew if something was found in the second mammogram, I would be taken for an ultrasound and would know some results that day, and I think that thought terrified me even more. But I was here to discover what, if anything, was growing inside my breast(s), so I had to follow through with the appointment whether I was prepared or not.
I was taken straight back for the mammography. It wasn't as uncomfortable as the horror stories claim, but I could have just been in a state of shock from my previous appointment. I did want the mammogram over and done with that is for sure. After the x-ray technician took the required x-rays, she had me wait in the internal lobby while the radiologist looked at the results to determine if I needed to have an ultrasound. I think that this was the most intense 10 minute wait I have ever had to have, sitting there hoping that the x-ray didn't show anything. Unfortunately, the x-rays did show something and I was to have an ultrasound done.
They would not let my husband Gary go back with me as moral support to have the mammogram or ultrasound done, so I was alone, with no one but the technicians in the room. The only comfort in that is that they were all female, so I didn't need to feel embarrassed about being exposed to the world. But there was no hand to hold as I cried when they discovered the three cysts in each breast. Of course, I didn't find this out as they were found, but I knew something was wrong since the tissue did not look the same as the rest of the tissue. It looked like holes in the tissue, so I knew something was wrong, just not to what extent.
The radiologist came in and started talking to me, telling me what they found. I asked for my husband Gary, knowing that the doctor would have to repeat what he had just said, but knowing that I needed the moral support because it felt like my world had just collapsed beneath me. Although there was only really one cyst that they were worried about because it seemed membranous. They want to do a biopsy. I want them just to take it out...surgically remove them all, get them as far away from me as possible, but the radiologist insists that although the surgeons may take the cysts out, they will not want to have to go in twice, so it is better to do the biopsy first. It is sad to say, but I am more afraid of a biopsy needle than I am of having them slice and dice me. I would rather be asleep and feel no pain whatsoever, than worry about them making a mistake with a needle, or having to go back and do surgery later. But, needless to say, I now have a biopsy scheduled for December 2, 2011 and I am scared.
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