Jaci Dawn

I know that in the Grand Scheme of things, my life is pretty insignificant, but… This week has been a hard week emotionally on me.

First, there was the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Things like that affect me very deeply even when I do not have emotional ties to the place or people, and this time I had emotional ties. All I can do is pray for the people of Japan. Well, I did a little more: I gave to Medical Teams International (From their Mission Statement: “To demonstrate the love of Christ to people affected by disaster, conflict and poverty around the world.”) Medical Teams International is one of the highest-rated charities, meaning what you donate to a cause goes to that cause and not to overhead. Every penny. My boss is (or was) on the board of Medical Teams International, too, so I feel like it is a very home-grown charity.

Then my son left for Iraq. I don’t pretend to think this is harder on me than it is on his wife. My heart breaks for Kaci, but she’s strong and she will manage somehow over the next eight months. I’m certainly not very happy with it, either, but it is what he does and he understands the risks.

Daylight Savings Time happened, too. Yes, I like the extra hour of daylight in the evening, but that alarm clock is killing me this week. I’m not a morning person and I drag all summer in the early morning. I’d be happy if we just stayed on Standard Time and I could sleep in a little every day. Oh, heck: I’d be happy if I could sleep until nine every day!

And then there’s the cloud of mystery that is hanging over my health. If you just popped in, I have what they call “hematuria“. When it started, back in January, it was gross hematuria which means pink pee. No pain, no injury. Just this new thing in the toilet (can I write that on a blog?).  I laughed it off the first two weeks: it’s a bladder infection, antibiotics will work…

It has now been 10 weeks. We have eliminated infection and injury, and now we have eliminated every organ in my body except my bladder.

I had a C-T scan and an ultrasound. Yeah.

So here are the results to date:

I have two very fine kidneys. The left one holds a teeny-tiny oval kidney stone that isn’t moving much, doesn’t cause any pain, and is not the source of any blood.

I have a very healthy liver, pancreas and spleen. Do you even think about having a pancreas or a spleen? How important are those, anyway? All I know about a spleen is this: my daughter had mononucleosis (twice) and the doctors told her not to lift anything over 5 pounds or she’d rupture her spleen and die. That’s what I know about a spleen (and I know that it is not a very large organ, having seen it in black-and-white on the ultrasound monitor).

I have a very healthy gall-bladder but there are four tiny, almost minute, polyps inside of it that I am supposed to keep an eye on. (Read: I should have a follow-up ultrasound in a year to see what the polyps are doing. I wonder if they will be having a tea party? The gall bladder looked sort of like a Hobbit cave…) Right now, I am hard-pressed to even care if I have polyps (are they stalagmite or stalactite in position? That is the only question I have).

(Do you, Dear reader, know the difference between stalagmite and stalactite? I do. I’ve been through Lehman Caves a bazillion times. Well, 20 times at the very least. I could lead a tour. I could turn the lights off, too. That’s really scary in the bottom of Lehman Caves because there is no dark darker than where there is no light at all. I love it. And my gall-bladder looked like a very dark cave.)

This news is supposed to make me feel better. I think. Except it doesn’t. It just eliminates every fail-safe possibility as to why I am bleeding and slowly narrows it down to the one cause that is not good. Is. Not. Good.

I suppose it could still be some benign bizarre bladder business, like a … umm.. a… (help me out here, folks!) POLYP. Yes, a benign bladder polyp.

I like that word: polyp.

Next installment of this bizarre bladder business will be after April 4. Just think: you get almost 3 weeks of not hearing about my bladder. Lucky you.

Wow. I can’t believe how much better I feel after making fun of my own body. This is actually very good therapy. For me. Probably not for my friends.

ttfn – love you all!