Tag Archives: health issues

Dealing With Hormones (or Trying To Work With My Eating Disorder)

Posted on December 16, 2016 | 1 comment

Like I mentioned yesterday, I had to stop taking my birth control pills because of my tumors. I’m still having a bit of pain from the IUD, but I know that will be ending soon and I’m so grateful that I’ve had an easier time than most of my friends. But as soon as I stopped taking my pills, my body was no longer on a steady level of hormones. And I’ve noticed that it is causing issues that I wasn’t expecting.

The first few days off of the pill were pretty easy. I was expecting things to be really horrible since I had been on the pill for 15 years. I know that a lot of people have pain and weird issues when you aren’t on regular hormones, but for a bit of time it seemed like I might have escaped that issue (I’m guessing all pain I’m feeling now is from the IUD and not stopping the pill). I’m still doing pretty ok with my hormones not being regulated and getting through the mood swings I haven’t experienced since I was a teenager, but I’ve noticed that it’s been causing problems with my eating disorder.

I have no clue if this is because my hormones are out of whack, I’m going through normal hormone fluctuations, or what it could be but my food situation hasn’t been great for the past 2 weeks. I’m having very odd cravings and I’m not able to ignore them. When I tried to ignore them, that brought on a binge eating episode so I’m trying to figure out what to do to handle the cravings but not let them get overwhelming. But they do get overwhelming from time to time and I’ve had to realize that maybe I have to accept this as a temporary situation.

A lot of the time, I can eat things that aren’t too horrible for me to handle the cravings. Lately, it’s been alternating between salty things (I eat saltines) or slightly sweet things (Cliff Bars do the trick). But those things both cause my weight to go up if I eat too much of them. And when I’m craving something, it’s so similar to a binge episode that I have trouble stopping it. I haven’t found alternatives that satisfy the cravings that aren’t as bad but I’m working on it. And I’m aware that these cravings can change over time so maybe in a few weeks I’ll be craving fruit or crunchy things like veggies.

It also doesn’t help that the day after getting my IUD, my scale went up 8 pounds. I know that it isn’t “real” weight but it was still distressing. The water weight will go down eventually, but when I’ve worked so hard to not gain weight it can be very upsetting to see the number higher than it should be. And I know that my body is extremely slow in losing water weight so it may take a lot longer than I would like. In the past, it would be a reason for me to say screw it and have a big binge episode. But I’m not doing that this time and hoping that my body settles down soon.

Since stopping my birth control pills and getting my IUD were so close together, it’s tough to know if things are caused by one or the other. I’ve been told it can take 3 months or so for your body to regulate with the IUD (and technically even longer to regulate after being on hormonal birth control pills). While this is the time that I wanted to work on my health to prepare for liver surgery in the spring, those months may just be trying to stay right where I am and getting through whatever my body has to go through to be normal again.

I have an appointment with my therapist next week, and I know this will be a lot of what I will be discussing with him. I’m hoping that he can give me some tips or guidance on how to deal with this and not have it delay the progress I’ve been making so far. I don’t know if he is able to see my full medical record, so I’m planning on filling him on everything with the tumors and all. Hopefully giving him the full picture of my physical health situation can help him help me with my mental health situation.

While I wish that I didn’t have the tumors and I was able to stop my birth control pills on my own timeline, this is probably a good thing. I’ve been on the pill for a very long time and while my time before it was pretty horrible with my hormones there’s a chance I’ve outgrown a lot of the issues I had before. Not having the hormones in my system could be a benefit for my eating disorder. It can be temporary that I have crazy hormone fluctuations but once things normalize I should be able to know when my binges may be more likely to happen. And then I can plan to try to prevent them. This is going to be a long haul journey, and while the beginning has been rocky I hope that in the end it ends up being a really great thing for me and my journey to recovery.

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An IUD Experience (or I Wish I Knew It Could Be This Easy)

Posted on December 15, 2016 | 4 comments

Warning for my readers (especially the guy readers): This post is about my experience getting an IUD. I’m not shy describing stuff so just know that if you read today’s post.

With the liver tumors, there isn’t much for me to do between now and my next MRI in the spring. I just have to hope that my body will decide the tumors should shrink so things will be easier. I don’t have to change pretty much anything in my life because of them with one exception. I had to stop taking my birth control pills.

I’ve been on the pill since I was 18 and it was weird to stop taking them. But knowing that the hormones in them were what caused the tumors (literally a one in a million complication) made it a non-negotiable thing for me to stop. Ironically, I had to stop hormonal birth control but right now pregnancy could be extremely dangerous. I needed something to make sure I won’t get pregnant before my surgery (even though that is not really a concern for me), and non-hormonal options are pretty limited. But since hormonal options will be out of the picture for me for the rest of my life, I figured now is the best time to figure out what I want to do.

I have a very open relationship with my family. It helps that my dad was an OB/GYN and there is no shame or embarrassment to discuss things with him or anyone in my family. And everyone in my family agreed that I should get an IUD. Several women in my family have them and love them.  And since there is a non-hormonal option (the copper Paragard), my OB/GYN agreed and scheduled me a time to come in and get one. While getting an IUD was something I thought about doing for a few years, I wasn’t too happy about having to get one. This wasn’t totally my choice, but I knew it was the best thing for me.

Of course, I reached out to all the friends and family I know who have an IUD to ask them about their experience. Mainly, I was terrified about the pain I might have with the insertion. I’ve read it can be very painful when you haven’t had a baby yet and I’m not a fan of pain. But since my OB/GYN knew how scared I was, she prescribed me some things to make it easier. I already have prescription motrin for my hip, but she also wrote a prescription for 1 dose of Valium to keep me calm and 2 doses of Codeine to help with the pain before and after.

Since I was going to be pretty loopy going to my appointment (I had never taken Valium before so I had no clue how I’d react), I had a friend who has an IUD drive me. I knew she’d be able to help keep me calm and would be a good person to have with me after if I was in a lot of pain. So this week, I had my appointment and I wanted to share my experience because I think it is important for people to know what it is like.

I took the painkillers about an hour before my appointment and felt fine with them. I’ve taken those painkiller before and knew I wouldn’t have any weird reactions. But when I took the Valium, I got loopy right away. I was shocked how fast it got into my system but was grateful that it did calm me down significantly. But when my friend picked me up, I knew I was acting weird. My brain and mouth felt disconnected and I couldn’t get out what I wanted to say. I was slurring (my friend said I sounded drunk or someone who was in the middle of dental work) and I couldn’t think of words that I wanted to use. I don’t like being out of control like that, but I knew it was for the best.

I was still nervous when I got to the appointment, but fortunately my OB/GYN is a family friend and was willing to work on making this as easy as possible. After doing a pregnancy test (they are required to do it even though I knew there was no risk of me being pregnant), my OB/GYN decided that the best option would be for me to get a shot of lidocaine. Most OB/GYNs don’t do this because getting a shot in your cervix can be very painful and can be worse than the IUD insertion. But for me, I didn’t really feel the shots. I didn’t know she did the first one and for the second one I didn’t feel pain but did feel a slow mild shock going up one side of my abdomen (it was on the side that the shot was going in on my cervix).

After the shot, we had to wait about 5 minutes for it to take effect, so we were just chatting and catching up on random things. I also told my doctor that I was totally going to be blogging about this so she took the IUD out of the box so I could get a picture of it before it went inside me.

You can see that the IUD is pretty small. The device it is in is the thing that is used to put it in your uterus (the arms get folded down before insertion, but I wanted the picture of it before it got folded down). Even though I knew IUDs are small, seeing it before the insertion did make me feel better. I don’t know why I needed more reassurance, but knowing that it was tiny and the device to insert it is smaller than a straw was good.

After I was numb, the next step was to measure my uterus so my doctor knew how far to insert the IUD. They used a device to hold my cervix open, but I didn’t feel it at all. I thought I might feel some pain or pressure, but when my doctor told me it was on there I was shocked because I had no idea. When she used the sounding device to measure my cervix, I felt that a bit. But I only felt it when it hit the top of my uterus and it was a little pinch (less than a shot or needle stick for an IV). I jumped a bit when that happened, but again it was significantly less than I thought it would be.

Finally, it was time to get my IUD. The IUD is loaded up in the insertion device and then it was placed in my uterus. I didn’t feel it at first, but as my doctor was placing it and getting the arms to pop out that was a weird sensation. I don’t know how to describe it. It wasn’t painful but it was odd. It almost felt like something was trying to pull my insides out of my body. It lasted maybe 3 seconds and then it was done. Then my doctor trimmed the strings of the IUD (I felt nothing) and the worst was over.

The final step was having an ultrasound to make sure the placement looked good. My doctor turned the screen so I could look at it too and she pointed out where the IUD is and where my uterus and ovaries are. It’s not easy to see in the image, but the long straight line in the center is the IUD.

The placement looked good to my doctor and we were done! If you don’t count the 5 minutes we waited for the lidocaine to take effect, the entire thing was probably less than 3 minutes. And I’m aware I had more painkillers than most people and I got the lidocaine shot too, but this entire process was pretty close to painless. Getting an IV for my liver MRIs were more painful than this process.

I have to go back to my OB/GYN in 6 weeks to have the placement checked again, but if everything looks good I’m protected against pregnancy for 10 years! There are no hormones in the copper IUD so it won’t affect the tumors at all. And if I want to have kids within the next decade, it’s pretty easy to have this removed.

I know that most people have much more difficult experiences than what I had. Even after the lidocaine wore off, I wasn’t in much pain. I have a small cramp in my lower abdomen, but it’s a pretty dull pain. I am still taking motrin as a precaution and after getting the IUD in I used a heating pad that night. But this was not unbearable at all. I know this could get worse later, but I’m not too worried about that. The thing that scared me the most was the insertion and I was laughing after it was done about how easy it was. If I had known that before, I probably would have gotten this years ago.

While I still wished that this was more of my choice and not something that was my only option, I’m glad I did it. I’m glad that I was able to manage the pain with the options I was given and that the experience was easy. All of the stress and worry I had before was so much worse than anything I experienced in the appointment.

I want to thank everyone who shared their stories of getting an IUD with me when I reached out for advice. You were all right that it wasn’t bad and that I was worrying more about it than I needed to. And if you are considering an IUD, know that while it can be painful that pain is usually over pretty quick. And maybe you will be lucky like I was and have an almost pain-free experience. Feel free to reach out to me through the comments or the contact form if you have questions or want to contact me about this. Obviously I’m an open book and happy to share whatever I can with you all.

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Health and Not Weight Loss (or My Current Game Plan)

Posted on December 9, 2016 | Comments Off on Health and Not Weight Loss (or My Current Game Plan)

Since getting sick, I’ve lost a pretty significant amount of weight. This is a good thing since I’ve been working on losing weight and I’m pleasantly surprised that the weight has stayed off. Typically when I lose weight quickly like I did, it comes back just as quickly as it came off. But this time has been different and I’m starting to be ok with that and not in constant fear that the scale is going to jump up like crazy the next day.

It does freak me out that many people are commenting on my weight loss. I’m hearing it from so many people lately. I know it’s a good thing, but I still feel like I didn’t earn it. But I’m trying to just accept that now I’ve been keeping the weight off even though I’m not sick anymore and focusing on that.

While I am trying to lose weight, I’ve decided that it isn’t my focus right now. I’m basically preparing my body for surgery now and I take that very seriously. When I was preparing to have my hip surgery, I did the UCLA RFO diet to lose weight. Being at a low weight was good for that surgery since it was helping to make my joints have less weight on them while I was recovering. But I still hate that I lost and gained that weight so quickly. But that was the best option at the time to get my body ready for surgery.

I’m really working on the physical part of surgery preparation. And yes, that does involve working on weight loss but that is more of an after thought for me. I know that this surgery will be tough on my core, so I want to get my core as strong as I can. After surgery, I won’t be able to do any core or abdominal work for a while as I heal. So being extra strong there will help with that. Being flexible will help too since I know I won’t be able to bend like normal for a bit of time too, so I’m working on stretching a lot and making sure I won’t have a hard time when I’m not able to move around as much.

I’m doing this by pushing myself even more at Orangetheory. I know I won’t be able to work out like normal right after surgery, so I want to make as much progress as I can now so the setback won’t be as bad. I’m looking into more workout stuff I can do at home that will help get my body ready for this. And I’m working harder than ever on my eating disorder recovery because that will help with the weight loss aspect of preparation. I know that the smaller I am the easier the surgery will be. The surgeon will have an easier time getting the tumors out and my scars should be smaller. Those are good things to focus on when I’m having a bad moment.

And there is a lot of mental preparation I’m doing to get ready to have surgery next year. Right now, the only thing I need to focus on is hoping the tumors get smaller. The smaller the tumors are, the less of my liver that they will have to remove (which means less liver I need to regenerate). My mom is a big believer of how much thinking positively can do to help your body. When she was dealing with chemo and radiation, she spent time each day imagining that little Pac-Men (that’s what she called them) were going to her tumor and eating it away.

I can’t see Pac-Men in my liver working on my tumor, but I have my own thing. For some reason, when I think of my tumor getting smaller, I think of the Dwarfs in Snow White with their pickaxes. So I spend time each day thinking of them using their pickaxes and busting up the tumor. I know that the tumor won’t go away completely from this positive thinking, but I’d love to see them significantly smaller when I have my next MRI in April.

I’m doing whatever I can to make this surgery successful. I’m grateful that I have time to get my body and mind prepared as much as possible. I know that even if I’m not as skinny as I was during my hip surgery, that doesn’t mean that I can’t be healthier than how I was back then. Health is the focus because that is what will control how successful the surgery is and how easy my recovery will be after.

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Tumor Updates (or I’ve Got A Plan For My Liver)

Posted on December 2, 2016 | 5 comments

It’s been an interesting adventure so far with my liver. In the past month, I’ve gone from thinking my liver was fine to thinking I had a cyst to finding out I had a tumor. Since I had no symptoms of the tumor, I’ll admit I was pretty shocked to find out it existed. But I was set up with a great medical team and my doctor has been very persistent in trying to figure this all out.

Before Thanksgiving, I went in for another MRI. This time, it was a different type of dye they used so they could figure out what type of tumor was in my liver. I knew I’d be meeting with my liver surgeon the Monday after Thanksgiving so I assumed that I would find out answers then. But on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I got a call from my OB/GYN (who was trained by my dad and has known my family for a while). She told me she had been following my medical records and saw that there was a report about my last MRI.

They officially declared that my tumor is an adenoma. This is the type of tumor that is a rare side effect from being on hormonal birth control. So my OB/GYN called me to tell me to stop taking my birth control pill because we didn’t want the tumor to get any bigger. She also told me on the call that they actually found out I have 3 tumors in my liver (the big one plus 2 small ones). She was able to send me the MRI report so my family and I could read it and she also talked to my dad to fill him in. We learned a lot by reading the MRI report (thankfully I have so many medical people in my family), but we were all still curious what the liver surgeon would say.

When I finally met with him on Monday, he pretty much agreed with everything we already heard. Yes, I have 3 tumors and they are all adenomas. He was happy to hear that I had already stopped my birth control and he explained my options. I could choose to not have the tumors out, but there is a very small chance that one day they could become cancerous and a larger chance that they could rupture and cause internal bleeding. Also, I could not get pregnant while the tumors are in there (pregnancy makes the tumors bigger and more likely to rupture). Or I could choose to get them out and have liver surgery that will take out 2 of the tumors (one isn’t in a spot where they could remove it right now) and then deal with recovery from surgery.

tumor

That large circle with the line through it is the tumor. It’s pretty large (almost the size of an iPhone) and covers a good portion of my left liver. The other tumors aren’t seen in this image but one is below the large tumor and the other is more toward the middle of my liver.

To me, it’s no question. I’m going to have surgery to get the tumors out. Even though the risk of the tumors becoming cancerous is very very small, I don’t want that risk (the chance of me getting these tumors to begin with was very small so I’m not a fan of odds right now). Also, I do hope that one day I will be married and want to have kids so I need the tumors out to have a safe pregnancy in the future.

Fortunately, nothing needs to be rushed right now. I’m not at a very high risk of rupture for the tumors (although I have been told to be careful with any trauma to my abdomen) and I don’t plan on being pregnant anytime soon. I was able to make a plan with the liver surgeon that I’m happy with right now. I need to stay off the hormonal birth control so we can see if the tumors will shrink at all (and I’ll be getting a copper IUD very soon to make sure I don’t get pregnant). In the spring, I will be getting a new MRI to see if the tumors are smaller and then I’ll meet with the surgeon.

And sometime in late April or early May I will be having my liver surgery. They will take out those 2 tumors (and maybe if the tumors shrink they can take out all 3) plus about 25% of my liver. And since I already need to have my gallbladder out, they said they could probably do that in the same surgery! I’m happy to know that I can do 2 surgeries at once.

It’s not an easy surgery to recover from. This will be much more difficult than my hip surgery or my tonsils coming out. I’ll need to stay at the hospital for a few nights and will take some time to get back to normal. And even though my liver will grow back (it’s one of the few organs that can do that), that will also take time and may be a bit uncomfortable or painful for a few months.

Even with all the negatives that the surgery may bring, I feel very confident in my choice to have the tumors out. I understand that I don’t have to do it, but in my mind having the surgery is the only reasonable option. Unless something crazy happens, I probably won’t have any more liver updates until my next MRI in the spring, but I promise to keep you all updated. One thing I’ve learned while researching liver adenomas is that there aren’t a ton of stories out there like mine. So I want to share the journey in case someone else has the same situation to help them feel less freaked out by it all.

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Thanksgiving Prep (or So Little Time)

Posted on November 29, 2016 | Comments Off on Thanksgiving Prep (or So Little Time)

Leading up to Thanksgiving, I knew there was a lot of stuff I had to get done and I was really trying to plan things out the best I could. Of course, things never work out the way you think they will. I’m just glad I got all my prep work done before I left last week!

The main part of my Thanksgiving prep was getting the food made that I knew I was bringing. I only was bringing 3 dishes with me, but when you have a tiny kitchen making 3 dishes can seem overwhelming! Especially when I don’t have multiples of the kitchen things I was using!

The first thing I made was banana bread. This has become a tradition over the past few years and I’m glad I’m able to make it to help out. It’s a pretty easy recipe to make and I happened to have some bananas that were overly ripe that I could use. I had almost all of the ingredients that I needed for the recipe at my house (except some of the dairy and the blueberries) and it was a quick thing to put together and get into the oven so I could make the 2 other things I needed to make.

The other dishes I was bringing were dips. I made the feta dip that is a tradition with the family (usually my mom makes it but it is now my thing to make). This is another easy thing to put together, but it is something that I usually don’t have the ingredients for in my house. But once you have everything you need, you just throw it all in the food processor and it is done! The other dip I made was a white bean dip that I found online. It was another really easy thing (just white beans, garlic, parsley, olive oil, and lemon) that was a food processor dip. The only complication I had was I only have one food processor bowl. So I made the feta dip, washed and dried the bowl, and made the other dip. Between the dips and the bread, I got everything done within about an hour.

thanksgiving-food

Packing was something else I tried to plan out, but it ended up being something that I was doing while I was working the day I was going to be driving to San Diego. My family now does casual Thanksgiving and that does make things easier with packing. But because I have lost a pretty significant amount of weight lately, I’ve been realizing that many of my clothes don’t fit anymore. So I grabbed all of the things I was thinking of packing and was trying them on between customers. I guess I should just feel lucky that my work is online chat and phones and my customers can’t see me!

Between packing and cooking, I felt like I had enough on my plate. But I also ended up having my liver MRI the night before driving to San Diego. I was at the hospital for a few hours getting it done so that was a bit of a time suck. The MRI itself wasn’t too horrible. Once the IV was in and I was in the machine, it was about 45 minutes. And at this hospital, you can listen to music while in the MRI tube. They had Pandora as an option and I requested the Broadway station. All the songs that played were things that I knew, but the best moment was when I heard my friend AJ singing on the “Heathers The Musical” soundtrack in-between 2 songs from “Hamilton”! That really made me happy and forget about all the stuff I had to do to prepare for San Diego the next morning.

And because all that craziness wasn’t enough leading up to San Diego, on Monday morning as I drove to my workout the power steering in my car died. I’ve never driven without power steering before and I knew that it was something that needed to be fixed before driving down. I took my car into the shop around 10am on Monday and discovered that the power steering in my car isn’t the standard one used so it would be tough to find a replacement part. They were hopeful that my car would be fixed by Friday, but that meant I wouldn’t have my car for Thanksgiving. Fortunately my mechanic offers free loaner cars so I got one of those and drove that to and from San Diego. As I’m writing this, my car still isn’t fixed. They got the replacement part in on Friday, but it’s still not fixing it. I’m hoping I’ll get my car back this week, but at least I have a loaner car to use so I don’t have to pay for a rental.

My Thanksgiving prep did end up being a bit stressful, but it all worked out in the end. I got everything done that I needed to (plus some things I wasn’t expecting) and I had an awesome Thanksgiving trip. But my Thanksgiving recap won’t be until tomorrow’s post!

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Meeting A Surgeon (or Working On My Liver)

Posted on November 10, 2016 | 2 comments

After I found out that there might be a cyst on my liver, there have been a couple of different medical tests I’ve had to do. I had to do another MRI with contrast and some more blood work (both things involved needles) so that the doctors could figure out what was going on. I knew that there was something wrong (I didn’t believe that the situation could just be one big mistake), but until this week I really didn’t know exactly what was happening. I just knew that something didn’t look normal but nothing looked so horrible that I had to rush to get tests done.

I tried to avoid looking things up online because if there was a cyst there are so many types of cysts that I don’t know what to look for. And if it wasn’t a cyst, I had no clue what it could be so trying to research things was pretty pointless. I figured that when I met with the surgeon I had to meet I could ask him all my questions and try to understand what was going on. I made a decent list of questions to ask him and went to my first consultation with this surgeon this past Monday.

The first thing that I learned was that I don’t have a cyst in my liver. I actually have a benign (non-cancerous) tumor in there. I know that the word tumor sounds bad, but this may actually be better than having a cyst in my liver. The tumor is both inside and on the outside of my liver and it’s pretty large (not as large as they thought, but still close to half the size of my liver). This is not an urgent situation and I’m not in any pain, so there’s no need for me to panic.

This tumor is likely one of two types of tumor. One type doesn’t have to be removed and is a relatively common type of benign liver tumor. The other type is a rare type of liver tumor that is almost only seen in women around my age who take birth control. The tumor is a side effect of the birth control hormones (but a very rare side effect) and it would need to be removed. Because the tumor doesn’t present like how either of those types of tumors look, I have to do some more medical testing. But I did get a good laugh out of the fact that my tumor is not typical since it seems like all my medical issues present as atypical and I’d expect nothing less from this.

The surgeon I met with was really amazing. He was fine answering all my crazy questions I had and let me take pictures of the MRI images so that I could show them to my family. And he was explaining as much as possible about the tumor to me. It’s tough to explain it when he’s not sure what type of tumor it is, but he did his best. I’m really happy that this is the surgeon that I randomly got paired with to work with on this. Some doctors don’t understand my need to understand things as detailed as I do, but he was almost happy to find out that I want to know things and make educated decisions.

While I was hoping that at this appointment I would get a proper diagnosis, plan, and find out if I need surgery; I’m ok with this just being the first step in whatever this journey ends up being. It’s going to either be something to monitor for the rest of my life or be a surgery sometime next year so I’m not in a rush. I want to make sure everything is understood before decisions are made and that’s what’s happening. I’m hoping I’ll have the additional testing (which will be another MRI and possibly one more test) in the next week so that I can have some better answers by Thanksgiving. That way I can discuss things with my parents in person (they help me make all major medical decisions since they worked in that field).

No matter what type of tumor this ends up being, I’m going to be fine. There is no reason anyone should worry about me. I’m not in any pain (my stomach pain had nothing to do with this and was possibly a really severe stomach flu) and there are no restrictions on my lifestyle right now. I can do everything I’ve been doing and I don’t need to worry about this hurting me or causing major issues right now. While it’s not great to have something in your body that isn’t supposed to be there, this isn’t a huge deal and whatever ends up being the plan will be just fine. I promise to keep you all updated as I have more information!

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Default ThumbnailBack To Focusing On Health (or Back To Back Doctor Appointments) Default ThumbnailA Tumor Miracle (or I Wasn’t Expecting This) Default ThumbnailGetting Ready To See My Liver Surgeon Again (or My Annual MRI) Default ThumbnailTumor Updates (or I’ve Got A Plan For My Liver) Default ThumbnailMedical Miracle Anniversary (or A Year Of My Liver Being A Badass) Default ThumbnailAnother Year Another Orthopedic Surgeon (or Not Worrying About My Hips As Much)

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Losing Some Weight (or Confused If This Is Good)

Posted on November 4, 2016 | Comments Off on Losing Some Weight (or Confused If This Is Good)

When I got sick, my food got weird for a while. The day I spent in the hospital, all I had for food was a cup of chicken broth. The next few days were pretty similar and I slowly added more soft foods in. Even at Disneyland, I was eating soft foods with having a Dole Whip and soup. I’ve been keeping this toward soft and bland food for 2 weeks now.

I’m finally starting to eat a bit more normally, but I’m still restricting things a lot. I’m a bit paranoid because I know I ate poorly right before I got sick. I have no clue if that is what caused the stomach pain, but right now it’s not worth the risk. I’m trying to keep things very basic, but my calorie counts are much closer to what I know I should be eating in a day (compared to being under 800 calories in a day with the broth and limited soft foods).

I will be asking the doctor that I see next week if there are any food restrictions I need to be aware of to help my liver, but I don’t think I’ll be eating the way that I did before for a while. This could be a very good thing. Maybe this shock to my system will help me get over binge eating. I’m trying to not be too optimistic because I know that a relapse is always possible. But with the exception of the time that I was doing the RFO diet, right now is the longest I’ve gone without a binge episode.

Because of my restricted food and lack of bingeing, I’ve lost quite a bit of weight recently. Since getting sick, I’m down almost 20 pounds. It’s insane to me and I know that type of weight loss is not realistic and is a result of not eating enough several days in a row. I don’t want to gain the weight back, but I’m aware that some of the loss might be water weight and might come back before I’m able to lose it again.

I personally didn’t notice a huge difference in how I look even with that much weight loss. I figured that my clothes were fitting looser, but nobody could see that so I figured nobody would notice the loss. But this past week especially, people in my life have been coming up to me and saying how I look like I’ve lost a bunch of weight. It’s great to hear compliments like that, but I also feel like I don’t deserve them.

This weight loss wasn’t because of hard work. It was because I got sick possibly because of my eating disorder and the results of being sick (ironically, in the past I usually gain weight when I’m sick so this is very odd to me). I didn’t do anything to earn the weight loss. There’s a chance that it will come back so I don’t know if I want others to see it because I don’t want people to notice if I gain it back.

I’m trying to be gracious when people compliment me and say thank you. But when close friends say something, I’m usually honest and say that I only lost weight because I was sick and I didn’t do anything for it. It’s a confusing place to be in since I’ve been working so hard to lose the weight, but I don’t feel right that I made the scale because of this.

I don’t want this all to be in my head too much. Hopefully, I’ll be able to continue the weight loss on my own and this will be a trend that is able to continue. It is weird to me to lose weight normally since I usually have only done it in an extreme way and it was expected that I would lose weight quickly. I hope that this feels normal to me sooner rather than later because I am loving the fact that I’m doing so great with food right now. I don’t want to go back, but I know that I have to work really hard to try to make that not happen.

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MRI Again (or Hoping For Some Answers)

Posted on November 3, 2016 | Comments Off on MRI Again (or Hoping For Some Answers)

When I did my breast MRI to check for breast cancer, I assumed that the next MRI that I would need would be whenever I get another one on my hips. Since I’ve had very limited MRIs (just my original hip one and the breast one), there was no reason I would think I’d be getting another one soon. But after my stomach issues, I was told I needed an MRI to figure out what was going on.

I ended up getting one scheduled earlier this week. I wanted to do it on a day that I didn’t have to work because I knew they would need to put an IV in me for contrast. I had the IV and contrast in the breast MRI and didn’t enjoy it too much, so I was prepared for the worst but hoped for the best. When I arrived at Kaiser, they were running about 45 minutes behind, so I sat in the waiting area reading a book and trying not to think too much about what was coming up.

When I was taken back to the MRI area, I was expecting to be led into a changing area where I would have to take off any clothing that had metal and I assumed I would also need to be either nude or down to underwear only under a hospital gown (that’s what the other MRIs were like). But to my surprise, the only thing required was to remove any clothing that had metal in it! If I had known that, I would have worn a sports bra so I wouldn’t have had to change. I didn’t get a fun hospital gown selfie, but I did take a quick photo of my MRI outfit before going into the machine.

mri

Once I was brought into the room, I laid down on the table that goes into the machine. The techs tried to get me comfortable with pillows and settled before putting the IV in me. I had warned them about my needle issues but said that since I was laying down that if I fainted it wouldn’t be a big deal. I didn’t faint (yay me!) but I did have a brief moment where I blacked out but could still hear everything around me. It wasn’t too bad and I was glad the IV was in and done.

I didn’t really do any research about abdominal MRIs before going in, but I assumed I’d be laying on my back and just be put into the machine. But they actually had to put this plastic and foam cage type thing around my stomach first and then I was strapped down to the table (I’ve never been strapped down for an MRI before). I wasn’t able to move at all, and it really sucked when they pushed me into the machine and all of a sudden my nose was itching like crazy and I couldn’t scratch!

I’ve got some issues with claustrophobia and this really tested me. I was completely in the machine and my nose was pretty close to touching the top of the tube. My arms were pressed against the sides and I did feel a bit trapped between the closeness of the machine and the straps holding me down. Fortunately, I could tilt my head back a bit and see a bit of the room behind me. So whenever I felt like I was going to panic I did that and tried to focus on my breathing.

The contrast in my IV hurt like it did last time, but it hurt much less than it did before. I’m thinking that is because my IV was placed in a better spot this time where my body wasn’t as crunched up. But they still removed the IV from me once the contrast was done so I didn’t have to deal with it anymore.

The entire MRI time was under 30 minutes and while I had moments of panic in the machine it did go by quickly. I tried to talk to myself in my head and recite lines from scripts I know or plots from books to distract me and help pass the time. Once it was done, I was finally able to relax and only then did I realize that I was pretty tensed up the entire time inside the machine. It’s wasn’t too bad, but some of my muscles felt sore like I had done a workout.

While I’m not happy I’m going through this medical unknown right now, I’m working on thinking of the positives. I’ve had more opportunities to work on my issues with needles and I feel like it is getting better. I’m hopeful that maybe in a few years I won’t have even the little blackouts with needles. I also was able to test my claustrophobia and panic disorder and had to force myself to settle those issues without medication or any distractions.

I haven’t heard anything about the MRI since going in, but that’s a good sign. I have an appointment to discuss what’s happening and what the plan is with a surgeon next week, and if I heard something sooner that would only mean something really bad and urgent is wrong with me. I’m very hopeful that this is going be a situation that will just be something that needs to be monitored from time to time and not something that will require surgery soon. But no matter what the plan and situation is, I know that it will be fine and I will be ok.

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Learning Lessons (or What Being Sick Taught Me)

Posted on October 28, 2016 | 1 comment

I’m finally feeling almost 90% better now. This past week seemed to drag on as I felt off, but I’m glad that I almost feel like myself again. I’m questioning if the residual uncomfortableness is related to my liver, but I won’t find that out until I meet with the surgeon in a week and a half. And I think that going to Disneyland was good for my mental health and that helped me to feel better.

I’m still being very careful with what I’m eating and trying to take things easier than I normally do. I don’t want to do anything that will make me feel horrible again and being cautious makes me feel a bit in control in a situation that feels very out of control to me right now.

Now that I’m almost over whatever stomach thing I had, I’ve been reflecting a bit on what good things came out of this. Obviously, discovering that there may be a cyst on my liver is something good to learn about. If I didn’t have the stomach pain, I wouldn’t have known until it was worse and it may have been a more urgent situation. And I’m starting to wonder if my stomach pain was my body telling me to get checked out. I know when my mom found out she had cancer, it was because of a suspicious bruise that wouldn’t go away. The bruise had nothing to do with cancer, but it was what got her to the doctor and to do all the medical testing. Maybe my body was doing the same thing.

I’ve been on a pretty restricted diet since last Wednesday. At first, it was just clear liquids (chicken broth and jello) and has moved to soft foods. I’m starting to eat more normally now, but I’m still keeping things a bit restricted. This doesn’t feel like a weight loss diet, but that’s what it is. I’m eating mainly fruits and some vegetables with very little meat. This is not the most restrictive diet I’ve been on, but it’s up there.

But because of these restrictions I’ve been rediscovering foods that I love or that I forgot could be just fine for a meal. I’ve rediscovered cream of wheat (although the exact packets I loved before don’t seem to be in stores anymore). I make it with water and have a banana with it and it’s a pretty filling breakfast or lunch. I’ve had cheese and crackers for dinner one night when I was feeling a bit full and knew I still needed to eat something. And I’ve been looking at making the sautéed vegetables again that I used to have a lot when I was on the cleanse I did last year.

All of those foods are things that I could have had before, but I either forgot I enjoyed them or was so focused on other things that I wanted to eat that they just didn’t come to mind. These are all good and healthy things for me to eat and I need to work on keeping them in regular rotation. While I’m still a believer that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, there is a difference in how you feel when your calories are from a variety of foods versus a binge of one food.

I’ve also learned how to be gentle with myself. It’s not easy to take things easy, especially when you know you have so much you need to get done. I don’t want to be lazy and sit on the couch all day because that reminds me of myself when I wasn’t working hard at bettering myself. But sometimes, you need to have those days on the couch doing nothing. It was important for me to do that so I could get better and if I had pushed myself I know I wouldn’t be feeling as good as I do now.

And finally, I’ve learned to accept the out of control feeling again that I really hate. Right now because my liver isn’t healthy, I can’t take any painkillers. I hate the idea that I might be in pain and can’t take something to make it better. But I have to deal with that now and it’s been a good thing for me. I may have been taking too many painkillers for what I really need (I usually took 3-4 a week so it wasn’t close to what the maximum I could take would be). I’ve had to tolerate a bunch of needles lately. In the last month I’ve had 3 blood draws, 3 shots, and 1 IV for an MRI. And I’ve got at least one more IV coming up next week. It’s not fun, it’s not easy, and I can’t do anything to change it. So I have to learn how to accept something I can’t fix and make it the best situation I can.

While I wish I could have learned all these things without getting sick, at least knowing something good came out of it makes me feel a bit better about the situation. I know that I may need this positive thinking to continue as I do more tests on my liver and find out what a surgeon thinks needs to happen. Maybe I will learn more lessons from this whole liver situation to make it even seem more worthwhile that I had to go through something that isn’t that great. I know how easy it can be for me to get sucked into feeling sorry for myself (I had that happen when I got sick last week) and I am refocusing my energy on learning what I can from the circumstances I’m in.

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MRI Time (or Another Type Of Cancer Screening)

Posted on October 18, 2016 | 3 comments

Because I’m considered high risk for getting breast cancer since my mom had it, I do cancer screenings a lot earlier than most people do them. For the past 2 years, I’ve done mammograms. They aren’t fun to do, but I know I need to do them. There is a chance that I might not be doing them every year for the next few years, but that’s not yet decided.

But because my mom’s type of breast cancer wasn’t caught on a mammogram, there was some discussion that I would need to get a breast MRI in the near future. I got a letter from my mom’s geneticist that explained that a baseline test for me would be a good idea, and my doctor sent that to a geneticist at my hospital. And after my last appointment with my doctor, it was decided that getting a baseline MRI would be my cancer screening this year (it was instead of getting another mammogram).

I’ve had a MRI before for my hip. That wasn’t a great experience for me because I didn’t realize how loud the machine would be and how long I would be stuck in there. I also went into that MRI knowing that if my pain went away or decreased after the solution they used was injected into my hip, that was a clear sign that my cartilage was damaged and I would need surgery (the MRI was before I had a full diagnosis or treatment plan). I was out of pain within minutes of the injection, so I spent the entire MRI knowing that I would need surgery and that freaked me out a bit.

This time, things were very different for me. First of all, this MRI couldn’t be done at my hospital. Because breast MRIs require special equipment and they aren’t done that often, there is an imagining center that my hospital outsources them to. I’ve never had to do any procedures or appointments outside of the hospital that I go to, but I tried to think about it as a new adventure. I was able to get a Saturday appointment, so I went right after work this past weekend.

When I got to my appointment, I had a dozen or so papers I had to fill out. Most of them were pretty basic, but there were a few things that I had to think about (such as the dates of my mammograms and the date of my previous MRI). I was trying not to be nervous while filling out the forms, but I’ll admit that I was a bit shaky as I was trying to write.

After my forms were filled out, I waited for a bit for my name to be called, and then the tech that I was going to be working with brought me back to the changing area. For my last MRI, I had to be naked under the gown (they needed full access to my hip for the injection) so I just assumed this would be the same. I didn’t realize that if I had worn pants with no metal I could have kept them on. I should have worn yoga pants so I could have done that, but I wore jeans so I had to just wear the gown. Not a big deal, but something to keep in mind if any of you are going to get a breast MRI.

Next, the tech took me into the MRI room. They were able to arrange for me to have an open MRI machine since I do have issues with claustrophobia and I was grateful for that. The tech had me lay down face up on the bed for the machine so she could put the IV in my hand. I’ve said how much I hate needles and IVs are the same problem. I told the tech my issues and she was seriously amazing! She asked me if I knew any good or bad veins, and I showed her the vein that was used for both surgeries I’ve had before. She was able to get the IV in with one stick, and then she got ready to prep me for everything else.

For most MRIs, you lay on your back on a table that slides into the machine. For breast MRIs, you lay on your stomach on a ledge that is on top of the table. There are holes in the ledge for your boobs to go into (they want to keep the tissue separate from your body) and you have your arms out in front of you. It took a few tries for me to lay properly so that everything lined up ok, but the tech was really great again and helped me get into the position that was going to get the best images in the machine.

Right before I went into the MRI machine, I got my earplugs (you totally need those for MRIs) and the tech hooked up my IV to a machine. For the first part of the MRI, there would be some saline going into the IV. But about 2/3rds of the way though, there would be contrast going through my IV to get a different type of images. I tried not to think about the IV too much and was slid into the machine.

While I was face down, my face was close to the front of the room so I could see light. And they had a fan at the front and the back of the machine so there was air always moving around me. Some of the images took 5 minutes and some were shorter. Each time, the tech warned me how long the session would be and I tried to stay distracted or count down the time. It’s extremely loud inside of the machine, and since my hip MRI had my head out of the machine I didn’t realize it would be quite as loud as it ended up being. It wasn’t too bad (the sound was very muffled with the ear plugs) and I tried to use the variety of noises to distract me.

Then it was time for the contrast to go into my IV. My mom had warned me that the contrast sometimes hurts, but it was more uncomfortable than I expected. The contrast is a thicker liquid than the saline so it feels weird. It wasn’t unbearable or anything, but I think the shock of the feeling made it feel worse to me than it really was. As soon as the contrast was all injected into my IV (it was done by a machine and not the tech), the tech ran into the room and disconnected my IV so that I didn’t get anything else into my vein. That made the discomfort go away almost right away.

After the contrast went in, there were only a few more minutes inside of the MRI machine. And before I knew it, it was all done and the tech was pulling the table out of the machine so I could get up. She first had to remove the IV from my hand and bandage it up, but I was able to sit up within a few minutes of being done. My body didn’t hurt too much, but my abs were a bit sore because I think I was tensing my body up from time to time and that gave my core a bit of a workout.

I didn’t get any pictures of the MRI process. I was so tempted to ask the tech to take one while I was in the machine, but I didn’t want to distract her from her work or make her run behind with other patients. But I did take a picture in the dressing room after everything was done.

after-mri

I felt really great after the MRI was done. I was so nervous about the IV and I made it through that. I was nervous what the MRI would be like or if I would have any issues, and fortunately I didn’t really have any problems. I haven’t gotten my results back yet, but I’m not too worried. This is just a baseline MRI so that future MRIs can be compared to it. I also know that MRIs (just like being young and getting mammograms) can have false positive results, so if I do hear back that there was something suspicious I’m not super concerned. There is no reason for me to believe that there is anything wrong with me and that’s the mindset I’m sticking with.

I know that having cancer screenings can be scary. You are terrified that they will find something and that’s why many people don’t do them. I totally understand that feeling, but I also know how important it is for me to be on top of my health and this is just a part of life for me now. I don’t know if I will be doing any more cancer screenings before I’m 40 (that will be up to my doctor and the geneticist to decide), but whichever way it goes I trust my doctors and that they are looking out for me.

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