Yesterday my gastroenterologist (Dr. Gravitas, his blog-pseudonym) was sitting next to me “brainstorming,” as he called it, about why it was that I felt so vaguely (but convincingly) bad. We were in one of the GI examing rooms in the Portland Clinic, which I should mention (now as good a time as any) are some of the most cheerless spaces I have ever been shut into: basement-trapped, windowless, yellowish, and papered with horrifying and didactic posters illustrating all of the fatal ways your digestive system can sabotage you. The medical assistant, whom I will call Felicity in observation of her inexhaustible, if occasionally clueless, cheer, routinely asks me what the weather is that day. I hate to use the term Morlock twice in the space of a week, even though you likely weren’t around for the first allusion, so I’ll try again: These poor professionals operate entirely in a chthonic lair, pale and resigned. I have trouble imagining what could be redeeming about this medical pursuit.

Dr. Gravitas was unrolling a list of possible sources to my malady. It could be that my esophagus and stomach had “really done a number” on themselves due to my medical insurance’s sudden complete refusal to pay for my acid-reducing drug (I hadn’t had a dose in a week). Maybe I had a virus or an infection in my esophagus. Possibly even a Crohn’s situation in there. But the symptoms were the best match for the possibility he listed first: gallstones.

Patients with Crohn’s have gallbladder difficulties inherently. General inabilities to reabsorb or handle bile, cholesterol, various interacting bits and bots. I haven’t taken time to go click on things and learn more about that. What I do know is that I lack an Ileum. This is unfortunate, because, as Wikipedia explains, “95% of the salts secreted in bile are reabsorbed in the terminal ileum and re-used”. I lack an ileum because they took it out, along with my appendix, a tumor, some lymph nodes and a wayward valve or two. This means my likelihood of getting gallstones is sort of a lot high.

“How do you treat gallstones, anyway?” I asked.

“You take them out!” he said, and laughed. Then he seemed a bit ashamed that he’d laughed but I was sill mirthful.

“Can they at least use the same holes?” I asked, referring to my extant scars from the Ileal extraction.

“Actually, it’s quite possible,” he said. He still seemed surprised that I exhibited levity.

“When I first met you,” he said, “I couldn’t even come into the room before your pulse leapt to 120. Now I’m telling you about potential surgery and–”

“I’ve been doing some relaxation exercises.”

“They’re working.”

My symptoms do line up with gall-badness. Pain and difficulty with fatty foods. Pressure and upper-abdominal misery. Recent rapid weight loss. A few other I’ll leave out because this is a family-friendly site (well, not really).

Tomorrow I’ll spend half of the day at St. Vincent hospital, a photo shoot for my upper-tubes. Perhaps I can make it glamorous. I doubt it, as barium milkshakes usually give me what could be understated as the violent and desperate runs (I rescind my family-friendly claim). Thursday morning I’ll have an ultrasound to look for those gall-pebbles. If the Thursday thing indeed finds solid bits, I’ll need to have surgery in the short term, during which they’ll yoink my gallbladder out.

It is probably exceedingly sad that this kind of feels old hat, but mostly I am bemused. If laparoscopic surgery and organ– (decrement!) is all it requires to not feel as moderately malaise-d as I have been lately, I’ll take it. Really.

I do love hearing from you in support, however. Please, if you feel like talking to me, this is a good time.