Finally Some Answers? in Life in General

So I finally got my HIDA scan. After a little back and forth the insurance approved it and I went today. The hospital tried to charge me an extra $400 for my deductible and I’m like…

… “um no ma’am I met that deductible a LONG time back”.

Luckily they took my word for it, and then later hopefully they aren’t gonna try and collect or anything. But anyway the scan was miserable… I didn’t realize how laying completely motionless for 2.5 hours would be so awful but it was… mostly just cause I needed to scratch my nose the entire time and one of my airpods fell out. I didn’t want to ask the nice tech to stick an airpod back in my ear so I just sneaked a hand from under the machine and popped it in between images.

Basically they took images every 15 minutes for 2 hours and the result was…

Zero tracer went into the gallbladder.

My liver absorbed it in about 8 minutes and it moved to my small intestine in 20 minutes, but the gallbladder did nothing. They told me I was free to come back in 2 hours to double check and I opted for it because if it helps move this process along a little faster I’m all game.

Luckily this was the same hospital Jessica works at so I was able to go hang out with her and her coworkers. They all just sit in this little office approving orders all day so it was nice to meet them and hang out. One of the students actually had her gallbladder removed so she was curious about my symptoms and results as well. Anyway I go back 2 hours later for a final image and…

…still nothing. Basically non-functioning it seems.

The only thing that has me worried here is that this typically happens when you have stones but I don’t have stones, just sludge. Also my previous US and CT didn’t show signs of cholecystitis. So why were those scans showing normal, but my HIDA shows my gallbladder with zero function?

I was worried at first that it was my liver not doing its thing, since I do have some slight elevation in ALT/AST. But seeing how my liver took the tracer no problem and moved it down to my small intestine within a normal time frame, I guess it’s fine.

Anyway, hopefully this is all the evidence they need to finally do something. Whether it’s trying to save the gallbladder with medication or just yanking the damn thing out of me. I don’t care either way I just want them to fix me soon because I’m about to move back to Texas in 7 weeks and I’ll have to get new insurance which means resetting my deductible. Also having a new baby during the move isn’t really a good time to feel like doodoo butts.

Well honestly I feel fine lately as long as I stick to a super low fat diet. I get occasionally a sour stomach when I eat a little too much, but I’m hovering around 5-10 grams of fat a day most days.

Which is lucky because my GI doc is in surgeries all week and likely won’t review my results until Friday.... ugh. Why does every step of this process take 1-2 weeks? I’d pay serious money for an Amazon-like medicinal service where things only take 2 days.

Well anyway that’s all I’m gonna write for now, but I do have some big news....

Jessica and I are home owners (kind of). I’ll explain later haha.