Friday, June 27, 2014

One more check (and I'll relax!)

So the pain in my upper abdomen to the left of the belly button is still there, intermittently,  and it had started in March. Add changes in bathroom trips. Add "tamed" anxiety. An explosive mix. Literally.

So after a bit of internal debate, I decided to go back to the GP. Could I have developed some food intolerance after the rounds of antibiotics this year? I knew the ultrasound was clear but I still did not feel well at all. Before going to the GP I researched a few gastroenterologists and actually made a couple of calls to find out waiting times for the visit and possible scoping. This one stood out and thank God for health insurance I could get in pretty quickly. The GP was great, suspected maybe IBS (which I never had and of course it could start any time but every guidelines said if this is suspected after the age of 40 for the first time, other, more omnous causes, must be excluded) and had no problem writing me a referral for the top GI doc. I went to GP on a friday and I had the appointment with the specialist on Monday. That's amazing fast. She was fab, Canadian, trained between Ireland and the States, a cv you could make a blanked and have some left over. She was very reassuring but said let's have a look, just to be sure to be sure it's only stress. So I had a colonoscopy the day after. Never had one before and I was sedated for the procedure so that was a breeze. What is not so much a breeze is the clean prep you do beforehand! A must-watch hylarious gig from Billy Connolly on the matter here, and he seemed to have used pills, I had to drink 2 liters of solution in the evening and 2 more litres at 5 am on the morning of the procedure!!
Anyway, as always I'm not phased at all by medical procedures so I wasn't anxious and then afterwards slept for hours at home.. I think that was totally what I needed actually!! I went back today (after an immediate reassurance that all looked quite normal bar some small diverticula) for a chat and review of the results. She tested me for celiac disease (negative) and checked my thyroid function too (all good). She also took some random biopsies (all normal) and observed this diverticula in the upper part of the colon. Nothing to worry about, they are shallow and open, but unusual at my age, normally you find them in 55 year old males. Ah well. On top of this I have a thickening of the mussels on the left side and certainly a touch of IBS. So I'm so glad I was not imagining things, yes, keeping calm and meditating and sports will help minimising the anxiety and IBS, but the pain I feel is real, thankfully a benign situation, and above all not in my head. You know the way you can really believe you are loosing your mind when every other week you have some odd physical symptom in random parts of our body? That was me.

One week to Boston!!

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Life is good

This weekend we are de-clattering. It gives me an immense pleasure to do so. Sorting out children clothing which will go to a charity, tidying up the balcony (soon to accomodate a storage unit for the bicycles and scooters and what not), tidying up the storage space under the stairs etc. Because you know, we are about to start a new project I don't think I mentioned it yet. We are going to replace our en-suite door with a pocket one! As the bathroom walls are tiled, Mike is going to do the job by accessing (and breaking) the wall just on the bedroom side. It is possible, we watched a youtube video, but it's definitely going to be a messy job. Mike never did it before of course but I have no doubt it will be perfect (he is handy that way). So far we sourced the housing structure and the tools. The door itself it's just going to be a plain one. I suspect we'll have to relocate to the attic while Mike is doing the work so it will probably happen when I'm back from Boston in July. Very exciting.
Children are good, Martina is a climber, goes up on everything and of course is not that balanced yet so weekends are definitely more tiring that the working days looking after the two of them! She eats everything (it's a while now we cook the same things for everyone) and she still has 6 teeth but currently drooling and red bum, so who knows, maybe a couple more are on the way. She is a great sleeper, I know Oliver had a major regression at 18 months, so hopefully she will be different (given the she never slept through the night till 10 month old!). She is still in her room but sometime in the future will be moving the children in together. Oliver is very good, with the occasional melt down, but he has started waking at around 6.30 and after going to the bathroom (the en-suite, he is almost always dry at night, we keep him in a cloth nappy just to catch the occasional accident) comes into the bed and that's the end of the sleeping for me. He seems to be functioning perfectly on very little sleep these days and he has black out curtains so it's not the light that wakes him at all, he just does and he's ready to start the day and keeps going till 8.30-9 pm...

I am doing well, I can feel I made a significant change in my anxiety, I don't torment myself anymore with awful thoughts, in fact I somehow came to the conclusion that even if I die, things will be ok for the children as Mike is a great dad. So this thought gives me great comfort and less anxiety and by default I son't think so much anymore about getting sick and die. As my stomach was still bothering me, I went to the gp last week (no anxiety, just to check) and she had me do an ultrasound to make sure there was nothing strange going on as she could not feel anything abnormal. Ultrasound showed a small gallstone which is not what's bothering me at all it seems, but everything else is absolutely normal, so this leaves the pain likely to be muscular (it's not food related). Let's hope it'll pass. I have gone back swimming now so that should help. I want to record here that for the first time in 15 years I think, I got a 3 days delay on my period (which was always early, about 25-26 days). Of course I didn't even bother testing because with no tubes it would be some miracle being pregnant and even if the thought did cross my mind (you know...there is always that one case on the web etc etc) it made me realise that I am really happy with a family of four and so we are thinking what to do with the embryos we have in storage (4 blasts from the same crop as Martina). We are both very much in favour of embryo adoption, but it would have to be an open adoption which here is unheard of. I would never feel comfortable not knowing where those embryos have ended up, not that I consider them my children, I truly believe children belong to who loves them and grows them up, but Ireland is such a small place I would worry they may end up marrying my children without knowing they are related!! I know they can be shipped abroad etc, I would hate to have them wasted, they can be so precious for couples who would like a family but for whatever reason cannot have a biological child. So we'll see. I'm putting this thought out into the Universe for it to be heard and now I'll wait and see what happens.

Less than a month to Boston!! Wohooo! Any takers for a coffee?