Just realized...

...that a lot of you don't have access to Heather's blog, and must feel kind of in the dark as to what is going on with me health-wise. :) Sorry about that. Here is a summary to catch you up.

• My symptoms sound exactly like gallstones or gallbladder disease, so when my blood work indicated nothing wrong with my gallbladder, my doctor ordered an ultra-sound to look for gallstones, just to double check.
• When my ultra-sound showed no gallstones or any indication of inflammation or anything, I saw a surgeon who said my symptoms still sounded like I have a malfunctioning gallbladder, so he ordered a HIDA-scan to test the function of that silly useless little organ that causes people more harm than good...sorry, I guess that was my little bout of ranting and raving. :)
• The day that I had my HIDA-scan, last Monday, I got a HORRIBLE attack that lasted like six hours, and for the last two hours or so the pain was so unbearable that Brent and Heather finally decided it was time to take decisive action. I called my surgeon on the emergency line. I was told to go to the ER, tell them whose patient I was, and I would be admitted to the hospital that night and would have my gallbladder out sometime the next morning.
• Sure enough, I was admitted that night, and the next day was told to prep for surgery. I had just taken my earrings off and bobby pins out and had made sure I was all bare under my hospital gown when my surgeon entered the room and informed me he had JUST cancelled the surgery. He had finally gotten my HIDA-scan results which had indicated my gallbladder is perfectly normal, so before rushing off to remove a potentially healthy organ, he ordered an endoscopy because the only other thing that has symptoms similar to mine is a stomach ulcer.
  
• The endoscopy the next day showed a perfectly healthy stomach. Surgery for the removal of the gallbladder was back on for the next day, both my GI and my surgeon thought that was the wisest course of action, explaining that there are plenty of things that go wrong with the gallbladder that won't show up on any sort of test or scan.
• Next day the surgeon put me out, cut me open, stuck a camera in me and investigated my gallbladder before removing it. No sign of it being unhealthy, no inflammation, no scarring, nothing. It is perfectly normal and fine. He didn't take it out. It's not the cause of my pain. Grr. He took a look around at the rest of my visible organs, everything else looks normal and fine. My lymph nodes in that area were oddly very prominent and inflamed, so he took a biopsy and sent it to patheology (sp?). Still waiting for the results, I'll get them at my appointment tomorrow. In the meantime, he's not sure how swollen lymph nodes could relate to the cause of my pain.
• Before they sent me home from the hospital my doctor ordered a CT-scan so that they could clearly check all the organs that weren't visible to the surgeon during surgery. Everything looks normal and healthy. My pain is still a mystery, and still sounds like gallbladder disease, but isn't gallbladder disease.
• The next step is a colonoscopy, something I'll have done within the next week or so.

That was a long summary. :)