Overcoming The Unknown Part 1

Living with Spina Bifida has been a blessing and well....not.  It's a blessing because I've had many opportunities to demonstrate for others what Is possible in spite of limitations with God as my strength and help. 

It's not been such a blessing when many operations are needed or the hospitalizations that follow.  Most of the time when a surgery was needed, both the Dr. and I knew what the problem was and what needed to happen to fix it.  This put me at ease, so I just wanted to get things over and done with so I could get back to normal. Most times, the only part that scared or bothered me was the pain of having the IV started.

The last few months of this year have been painful (physically and otherwise), scary, confusing and a real challenge of faith for me.  In August, I began having more issues than normal with my stomach(because of SB, I'm bowel and bladder incontenent along with other internal complications).  Many times, after I knew I didn't need to use the bathroom, I still felt full, bloated and my stomach was distended out so far I looked to be 6-9 months pregnant. I'm an eater, but I knew that I couldn't have been eating That much too make this happen.  Movement, especially transfereing, was difficult since my stomach was getting in my way.  I often felt sluggish and had to push myself to feel like doing much of anything.  I couldn't understand it because at every Dr. visit I was given a clean bill of health.  To the naked eye, I didn't have the physical appearence of being sick...probably just fat.

 I decided to go to my Gastrointerologist to discuss my issues with him and see if he could suggest a different bowel regimen and see if there may be issues that I wasn't aware of.  He ordered a CT scan of my, colon, intestines, gall bladder and kidneys.  I waited to hear results.  When I had waited what I thought was a reasonable time, I called about the results.  The nurse said everything came back fine.  I said, "I can't dispute that, but why do I feel this pain and where's it coming from?"  She said she'd have the Dr. call me soon.  The next morning, he called and confirmed the findings.  HOWEVER(emphasis), he said the only other thing he saw was that I had an enlarged left kidney and a sack of fluid on my abdomen that had actually shown up on a CT scan from June '10 after I was in an accident.  I never heard about this finding, so this was a surprise to me.  He said he'd done all he could for me at this time and would recommend meeting with my Urologist for my bladder and my Neurologist for my shunt.  He also said if those appointments went well, come back and we'd talk some more.