The Learning Umbrella

I don’t know if you noticed my absence, but I’m just back home after several days in the hospital.  Last week I had a very bad attack of the pain that I thought was from a hiatal hernia.  This was my naturopath’s diagnosis, although I had also had MD’s diagnose me with “stress”, and “obesity related heart burn”.  The MD’s seemed to be saying they didn’t think I had a real problem, was the impression I got from them.  So I thought I had to just live with this pain and try to adapt my lifestyle and diet, even though this pain was very intense.  I’ve been having these pain attacks about once a week for 2 years now, and it’s seriously impacted my life. 

So last week I had another attack, and it was a bad one.  I struggled through as usual, but when it had gone on for almost 3 days and hadn’t stopped, I started to panic.  It was the afternoon, and I had all my daycare kids here, so I had to call my DH and SIL home, call all the daycare parents to pick up their kids, and call the Group Health nurse hotline to see what I should do.  Once DH and SIL were here, she watched the kids and he took me in to the Urgent Care Clinic.

Finally, a doctor took my pain seriously.  It was a male doctor, and I don’t know if this is fair or not, but I’m starting to think that female doctors are more likely to think that pain is just a normal part of life that you shouldn’t complain about, while males think you shouldn’t live with pain.  Just my experience so far.  They did some blood tests, then I had x-rays, then I had an ultrasound, then I had an MRI.  I had gall stones!  That was what was hurting so much.  Apparently, I’d been having gall bladder trouble for a long time, and in fact it was pretty bad and my liver function was also down because of it.  So, on Saturday I had my gall bladder removed.  It hurts right now post-surgery, and I’ll have to follow a special diet, but the thought that I may not have that chronic pain now is so wonderful I’m almost happy to be in this pain at the moment.

I’m pretty tired, so I’ll stop here.  Later, maybe I can post about how my family had to cope without me - I think they learned a few things about how much work I do!