This Is My Gallbladder

Okay, okay, so it's not really my gallbladder (thanks, Google Images). But it's pretty close.

I went for an abdominal ultrasound today because my doctor wanted to get a closer look at what was going on inside that belly of mine. Lo and behold, when they got to the liver/gallbladder, what should appear but a large boomerang-shaped white mass. Also known as a gallstone.

Dammit.

Now I am no radiologist and I could be way off-base, but when I did some research over the weekend and looked at images similar to the one above, I had a sneaking suspicion that this could be the problem. And when they dug that transducer thingamajig (nice health care lingo, Teeny) into my abdomen - which, by the way is pretty uncomfortable - I saw the same image pop up that I'd been staring at all weekend. Put it this way, if it's not a gallstone I saw today, I don't know what else it could be.

Now of all the things it could be, this is one of the more benign. It is fixable and it means that the horrific pain I've been experiencing will soon be a thing of the past. Even better, it means that I'm not losing my mind - I was genuinely concerned that the pain was psychosomatic and I was in need of some serious therapy.

The bad news is, fixing it more than likely requires surgery. Again, a pretty benign procedure that entails removing my gallbladder laparascopically. Discharged from the hospital within 24 hours and fully recovered within a week. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am. And if I thought I got a jump start on my weight loss goals by having zero appetite (for fear of being doubled over in pain for hours after each meal), this is icing on the cake for my poor little bathroom scale.

Still, going under the knife is not appealing to me right about now. Especially because general anesthesia and I don't get along very well. And it's Christmas time. And I am not a fan of spending the night in the same hospital where my Dad suffered for a full month. That place haunts me.

But I guess I should be thankful. It could be so much worse. Who needs a gallbladder anyway?