I had my follow-up with the gastroenterologist yesterday.  During the endoscopy I had in March he saw some irritation and put me on Prilosec OTC.  I tried taking it in the morning, then the afternoon, and finally at night.  Nothing changed.  I knew I had issues other than my gallbladder that would need to be addressed once everything settled post-surgery.  This other discomfort (that occasionally becomes real pain) began with my last bad gallbladder attack, and has persisted.  We know part of my problem, which you don’t want to hear about, but there may be other issues, most of which you also don’t want to hear about.  He’s treating these symptoms and we’ll see what happens.  I’m having a non-invasive test run on Tuesday which may answer some questions.  I’m not too worried about all of this.

What does concern me, however, was something he told me almost in passing.  Though he didn’t mention it at the time, he said he saw water/fluid build-up in my abdomen during the endoscopy.  He said it was something to think about but nothing to worry over; I let it go.

But today I got to thinking about it and I decided to search Ask.com for “fluid in the abdomen.”   I double-checked with Google.  The response isn’t pretty.  It’s called Ascites, and has many very nasty causes.  I’d really rather not have any of them, thank-you very much.   Still, I’m hoping that it’s something totally innocuous that simply didn’t pop up in the search engines.  As I said, the doctor noted it but didn’t seem too concerned.  I am, but he isn’t.

To top it off, my back has been acting up again since my cold because of having to sleep sitting up.

My body needs a good swift kick in the butt.  At this point I doubt it could hurt anything.  Surely one of you is willing to try?

*_{Violet Beauregarde was the girl who filled up with blueberry juice during her tour of Wonka’s chocolate factory}

This cracks me up.  There is actually a house for sale, but it is tucked back in the woods behind the cemetery, out of sight.

Before he left for work this evening Randy had thrown in a load of laundry.  The last thing I remember him saying about it was that the washer was finishing up.  I told him I would switch everything over to the dryer when it was ready.

A little while later I went out to the cabin but heard the machine going in the laundry room.  I waited awhile longer.

Finally, I went back out again and the machine was silent.  To my surprise the washer was empty, the dryer full, everything done.  I thought:

Wow.  We had an intruder and he switched the clothes for me, psyching me out, letting me know that he was here by doing the laundry for me.

Then I saw that the door was still locked. 

Clever intruder.

Realizing that someone that intelligent was going to get me if he really wanted to, I shrugged it off and went back to watch television.

_{(Yeah, Randy did it himself earlier.  But my version was more interesting.)}

When I was a kid, “Punch Buggy” occurred when a VW Beetle went by.  According to recent commercials, however, it seems that any VW meets the “Punch Buggy” requirement.  This leaves me to wonder:

How many people have been injured accompanied by the triumphant cry, “Punch Buggy Black!” when I drove by?

I can barely talk.

My husband is smiling.

You don’t suppose there’s a connection, do you?

Had database issues (you’ll need to reset your feeds for my blog if you haven’t already) and have lost a couple of months worth of posts/comments.  This is why you should back up your files often.  On the positive side, school was so busy that I didn’t actually lose much.  So I guess that’s the positive side of being so stressed from school that I couldn’t think straight half the time.

There’s a silver lining to everything if you only look hard enough.

Proper post to come soon.