A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That

So I thought I would take a few minutes to give everyone a few updates. I guess I'll begin by telling everyone that I had surgery yesterday morning to try and find the source of my pain. A few months ago I met a wonderful OBGYN who thought my pain could be caused by scar tissue that formed after my appendix was removed. I decided to allow her to go inside to take a peak and remove whatever she finds. I went into this surgery anticipating the removal of this scar tissue, but what they found kind of shocked me. My OBGYN didn't find any scar tissue from my appendix, but she did find endometriosis. I was shocked because on two other occasions I've been check for endometriosis (including the day I had my appendix removed) and nothing was found. So now I'm kind of curious to know how long it has been there. I don't have any other information as to what else could have been found, but I should know more when I return to her office for my follow-up. What an odd turn of events....

In other news, Jim and I found out that the dog is pregnant. No, not our dog, but the dog that's carrying our puppy. We're still very excited and the litter should be born the third week of January, which means we hope to bring home our puppy around March 10th. And we still haven't decided on a name yet. I went looking the other day and I came across a few that I sent Jim; Thor, Conan, Zeus, and Amarok....at least we still have several weeks to decide.

We also recently decided to move Jimmy's bedroom. Jim has been wanting to switch the office and Jimmy's bedroom for quiet some time now and it looks like we'll be doing everything in a few weeks when I finish this semester. I have about a month between semesters and I really think it will be perfect timing to patch some holes, paint his new bedroom, install a few ceiling fans and clean everything out. It's not exactly a project I'm looking forward to but in the end it should be nice. I'll be sure to take pictures throughout the project, so keep an eye out for updates within the coming weeks.

I went through the camera today so I think I'll end this post by sharing some recent photos with everyone:

I'll start with a few pictures of the animals, of course I don't have a good one of Corki...

Here are some pictures that my mom took on Thanksgiving.

Mystery Diagnosis

Okay, I know it's been a while since I updated all of you on the pain that I've been getting on my right side. I've been taking birth control pills now for 5 weeks and while I haven't had any major "flare ups" I've still been getting some pain. Luckily nothing has been so intense that I've had to take pain meds, but the pain is waking me up. I'm now back to getting the pain daily at around 4am and it goes away shortly after I've gotten out of bed in the morning. I'm not scheduled to go back to see Dr. Thompson until January but he did suggest that I see an OBGYN (mainly because I haven't had a pap smear in several years) but also so we could get another opinion.

Yesterday I met with an OBGYN from Santa Fe who seems to think the pain is a result of my appendix being removed. When I had my appendix removed, I was told it was covered in scar tissue. I went a year and a half with no pain and now I'm here with the pain again. So what could have happened during this year and a half to cause this pain to return. Well, it would appear that it takes about one to two years for the body to fully heal and form scar tissue around the wound. Unfortunately, to much scar tissue can form and it will begin to contract...causing pain. Scar tissue does not appear on an ultrasound and the only way to find it is to go in and look for it.

So, I've elected to have another laparoscopic surgery to pull the scar tissue out and hope it doesn't appear yet again. At this point I don't have anything scheduled, but I plan on calling the office tomorrow to see when I can be fit in. All I know is it will be on a Tuesday, since she does all of her surgeries on Tuesdays. Since it's laparoscopic it's a quick surgery with a quick recovery. In fact I only plan on taking that Tuesday and Wednesday off from work.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to getting relief from this annoying pain and I'll update all of you when I find out more info.