Another Bump in the Road

Okay so...I never said my life has been easy. In fact, it seems like I have always:
1. done everything the hard way
2. done everything way too late
3. got sidetracked because of some major illness

Yesterday I opened...wait for it....da da da da! Door # 3. Huh.

Okay so harking back to the 2010 post "In my Dirty Hospital Johnny" http://thepapergirlsstudio.blogspot.com/2010/11/in-my-dirty-hospital-johnny.html
When my life took a nightmarish turn when I ended up in the hospital in Bucharest. So that was the beginning of my sojourn with the "7 Sisters" as my friend Barb likes to call them (7 ulcers). As soon as I came home I went to my gastro gal and she confirms I had not 1 but 7 ulcers (I am never one to do anything in a small way). Okay, so lets deal with it. She suggested this was a bad thing and I should not go into the Peace Corps (I was heading there in 2 weeks time) and I laughed. No WAY was I missing this chance!

Anyway, I'm fairly stringent with my health because of a previous cancer and a family history so I keep up-to-date with all that stuff but things got to be ridiculous on the pain side of things.

Okay, so fast forward to last December. I paid the doc another visit because it had been 2 years since my last endoscopy/colonoscopy. I had been having a lot of pain and just could not stay off the OTC generic Prolisec so I know that the "sisters" are either not clearing up or multiplying. To say nothing of the pain in my ass from a chronic 15 year old fissure I just had to get some relief. (Sometimes I live with pain for so long I come to think of it as normal. Just what the hell is wrong with me anyway?)

Yesterday I had my tests and the docs face was well, not good. "We got some problems here" she says in her accented Italianized English. "We need to fix you". Okay. So now what?  "You have bigger problems in the duodenum. Ulcers are spreading and are bleeding. They are also in the ileum (inside of the intestines)". Then she looks me in the eyes and says "In my 30 years of practice I never seen anything this bad. Never." Gee, thanks doc. But...didn't you get the memo? I ALWAYS do everything in a BIG way. Okay, so this isn't all of it. I also have some kind of monstrous mass in my rectum. "Too big to cut out" says the doc. Nice, I say. "So, now can we fix my fissure"? Okay. We can do that, she said.

Huh. Finally. I have been complaining about this pain for 15 years and have done everything I could to fix it, and now that I have a big apple in my ass it's finally gonna happen. Lovely.

So, now the fun starts. CT scans, surgery (in 3 places mind you!!!) and ANOTHER colonoscopy in 6 months. GOD I hate the day before. Although, now that I think of it, if they get rid of my ulcers, maybe it won't be so painful to have an empty stomach?

Stay tuned interested readers.....