Hold On With That Scalpel

In last Monday's posts I was sort of celebrating the news that Bettie was going to have surgery. It turns out the party was premature...well...sort of. She is going to have surgery, and soon...Wednesday, the 28th. But it won't be the gall bladder...at least not just yet. There is something more pressing, and possibly more serious.

Here's the story: Dr. Schumer, our primary care guy has referred the results of the most recent gall bladder scan to our old friend Dr. Stephan. (You may remember him from the posts on August 25th and 27th). He is not so sure that the gall bladder is actually the issue after all. That scan was, while not pristine, actually pretty close to normal. Not what you'd expect to see for the level of pain Bettie is suffering.

Meanwhile, a couple of other issues have come to the surface. When comparing images from the last couple of months, there is a noticeable increase in the size of several of her lymph nodes. In addition, a couple of suspicious knots have developed, close to the surface of her lower right abdomen. When I first noticed them about two weeks ago and pointed them out to the doctor, they were almond size. Now they are walnut size. Dr. Stephen does not want to remove the gall bladder, only to later discover that it was actually something else. So Here's the plan:

• Today Dr. Stephan sent us across the street to the Auburn Medical Center lab for some blood work. That will give him another gauge on the gall bladder issue.
• Tomorrow, again at Auburn Med, Bettie will have a HIDA scan of the gall bladder which will test its functionality. If this test proves normal, that will pretty much end that organ as a suspect in the pain mystery. If it is not normal, the bladder will be removed, probably within a week.
• Wednesday Bettie will go into surgery for a biopsy of the largest of the aforementioned knots in her tummy. This will give us an indication of just how serious an issue we are dealing with in the lymph nodes. Baring complications, she'll be home again that day.

While I like to keep this blog as upbeat (sometimes, I'm told, even funny) as possible, we all have to realize what could be going on here...and where it could ultimately end. So for now, it is very day to day. I'll know, and post, more tomorrow. The biopsy results however will probably not be known until Friday at the earliest and maybe not until Monday. In even the worst case however, nothing will be done the rest of this week. That is, the doctor does not foresee any condition that would require emergency action.

So I'll try to continue with the upbeat stuff, but just between you and me, I'm whistling in the dark here.