October 2010

This time of year is certainly my favorite. I love when the weather just gets cool enough to need a sweater. I love making a pot of soup and warm bread for dinner. I love all of the fall decorations. I love carving and painting pumpkins. I love going to places like "Great Country Farms" with my family and spending the day. I LOVE pumpkin spice lattes. Yep, this time of year is my favorite.

So... October went as planned. I was doing and enjoying all the things from my list of Fall Favorites and then my back started hurting. The pain was so bad that I decided to see a doctor about it. I had my doctor's appt. last Thursday. After explaining all the other symptoms I was experiencing, my doc was convinced it was gall bladder related. They took blood and scheduled me for a sonogram. The next morning I had my sonogram at 7am. I drove from WV to Sterling, VA my daily commute about an hour, but this morning I had to do it without coffee!! TORTURE!! After the sono I ran to McDonalds and picked up a sausage egg mcmuffin and a coffee for breakfast on my way to work. By noon I was in so much pain that I had to leave work early. On my way home my doctor's office called and asked me to come into the office. The blood work showed that my liver enzymes were crazy high. The sonogram showed that my liver and spleen were enlarged, so they put me in the hospital. That night (Friday) they sent me for an MRI. At this MRI they found that my gall bladder is full of gall stones, an enlarged bile duct, which is indicative of a stone that is blocking the bile from coming down. This meant that my gall bladder needed to be removed. They also found a tumor/mass on my adrenal gland. This needed to be tested before they could procede with any surgery because it could be pheochromocytoma, which means that it secretes epinephrin and that mixed with anesthesia would mean crazy high blood pressure possible resulting in stroke. I got to leave the hospital on Sunday night, I passed the gall stone and was feeling better. I just needed the test results. 4 long days later...the results all came back negative and benign. Great news!! Now... I'm waiting for surgery to have my gall bladder removed. This Thursday (11/4) is my pre-op appointment and I should know more. I'll keep you posted as to how the surgery went. In the mean time I'm eating very lowfat and enjoying the 7+ pounds of weight I've lost. :-)

Today was halloween!! We all had such a great time. I made a big pot of chili, and our great friends, the Logreco's came over for dinner and to go trick or treating. Ellie was a witch and Hayden was a cute little monkey. A friend of ours Chris went trick or treating with us and took pictures of the kids. Justin stayed home and passed out candy. We trick or treated most of our neighborhood and came home and the kids went nuts with the candy. It is the only night of the year I let them just eat as much as they wanted until 8:00 and not making themselves sick. Everyone pigged out and now they are all in bed. I'm heading in that direction too!! We are healthy, happy and blessed beyond measure.