eww!

Thought you all might be interested in the pathologist's report on my gallbladder. :-) This is straight from the report. Warning: It still makes me shudder with revulsion to read it, even though it's referring to my gallbladder.

silly struggle

I am having this struggle lately with wanting to buy new furniture. Struggle, I say, because we can't really afford it, at least not to pay cash for it. I usually distract myself from this temptation by remembering how wonderful it is that we've had to buy hardly anything for our home -- it's almost all been given to us, either as wedding gifts or as hand-me-downs from family or friends. Such as...

lost sense of humor?

I feel like I don't have anything interesting to blog about anymore, and I don't know why that is. I look back through my old posts, when Jacob and Ethan were preschoolers, both before and during the first year after Samuel was born, and it seems like life was full of funny antecdotes. Do I not see them anymore? Have I become so accustomed to how kids act that it doesn't amuse me the same way anymore? Am I too focused on myself to notice their cuteness, the humor in sometimes exasperating situations? Has my attitude toward it all changed, darkened?

Well, I don't know whether those things are true or not, but wouldn't you know that as soon as I noticed that I wasn't noticing cute or funny things my kids do, I noticed something cute Samuel did. So, despite not having many funny stories to share lately, here is one:

wonderful things

I have decided that minimally invasive surgery is one of the most wonderful modern inventions. It's hard to believe that two days ago, a surgeon cut into my abdomen in 4 places and inserted tools by which he, essentially, dissected my internal anatomy. Granted, the incision sites are pretty sore, like one would expect, but I am still amazed that I can be sitting up and walking around so shortly after surgery! Also amazing: modern painkillers. I let the pain medicine run out a bit yesterday morning and realized just how much it was helping. I am back on schedule and determined not to stretch the time between doses again for another day or two.

surgery

Those of you who I see somewhat regularly have already heard about this, but there are some of you who might not have heard yet. I'm having my gall bladder removed this week, on Thursday. I had a couple of "attacks" last month, and upon investigation, they diagnosed me with chronic cholecystisis, which is basically inflammation of the gallbladder. No stones were visible on the sonogram, but the wall of the gallbladder was thickened (6 mm versus 2-3 mm normally), indicating chronic inflammation, which (according to what I read) can cause the gallbladder walls to thicken and become stiff.