dlp252

Wait, I had it wrong, maybe instead of an icehouse we need a hot house, lol. Rachel can garden in the hothouse to get her hot fix.

I want to be warm but others like rainy and yet others like cool weather... thinking it has to be a place that has it all..... I just decided you'll have to be the enviromental coordinator

Have some family friends in Beirut right now... they're still stuck there I wish the world lived like we do in Rachelville)

Gosh I'm sorry about your friends in Beirut! That has to be really scarey!

I think if we have an ice house on our farm (shouldn't be located next to the drunk shack) I'll be fine. I can do sit in there anytime I'm too hot.

Wow, again, adding replies to OLD news, lol.

Hum, I think I have to be on the security detail somehow...I can be downright formidable if I have to, lol. That pesky ant wouldn't have lasted a minute in MY house. (It would have, of course, had a happy life in the great outdoors).

I can do the typing for the group. There would be lots of typing needed I'm sure.

I like the idea of being the shopping consultant. I like shopping. Just don't put me in charge of the finances.

Oh Celia, I'm hoping you are feeling much better!!

Has anyone here had a CT Scan? I went for one early this morning, strange on a Sunday, but I wouldn't let them give me the liquid to drink or inject me with the dye and they went ahead and did the scan anyways but they said it wouldn't be as effective. I'm wondering what experiences other have had? My mother told me that she had a very bad reaction to the dye and after reading the possible side effects I was sure I didn't want it in my body. Here they are:

I've had a few on my sinuses, but never had to drink anything or have any dyes injected, so no help there from me.

A friend, not an old friend but a new one, one I hoped to know for many years, will most likely die tonight or tomorrow. On his 43 birthday just three weeks ago he was diagnosed with cancer and now he is throwing clots and they cannot operate. They have done everything for him they can. He and his wife have small children and it is immeasurably sad. It is also so brutal on everyone when illness and death are so sudden. Perhaps with our illness there is a recognition that life can be brief and that all that "fussing and feuding" are really a waste of our time when we have the opportunity to say, "hello, nice to meet you, can we be friends?"

Wow, how incredibly sad and how profound at the same time. I am speechless on this except to say thank you and I'm so sorry.

See....now this is where I'm torn. I want the picturesque landscape with the green hills, flowers, and serenity... but then we HAVE to have the mall right on the other side of the hill or I might die!!

Yah, maybe if it's a big hill we won't see the mall and people won't try to infiltrate our cult farm with glutenous thoughts and we can still get our shopping fixes.

Hum, alcohol, well I don't drink much anymore...I'm a cheap date...half a glass and I'm tipsy...we'd better have a "drunk shack" somewhere on the property.

Anyway, daddy was sitting at the dining room table, drinking coffee and reading the paper. When the doorbell rang, he glanced out the DR window and spied JLL on the front porch. As he jumped up and dashed toward the front door, mother asked, "T., where are you going?" That's when daddy, who had never said an unkind word about anyone in his life, uttered the words that have gone down in our family history: "I'm goin' to throw a piece of white trash off my porch!!!" And so he did.

My dad once threw a knife salesman off our front porch...not nearly as exciting as throwing a rock star off the front porch, but it was all we had, lol.

Okay, so here I am again responding to things that were discused 1,000s of pages ago, lol.

Goat milk. Couldn't stand the taste of any of the brands of goat milk I tried, but I love goat milk yogurt and goat cheese. I haven't tried any since going dairy free in December. I think I'm afraid to try. I haven't had a single sinus infection since November and I'm afraid to mess that up, lol. I was getting them (sinus infections) every 5-6 weeks without fail. I would love to have yogurt again though. The brand of yogurt I bought was a little runny but it was good, course I added sugar free syrup which is all chemicals, so wouldn't do that now, but I might try stevia which I'm finally getting to be able to tolerate taste wise.

Clothing on the Farm - yes, please, lol. I love you all, but some form of clothing please. For the record I'm wearing a workout type tank and shorts, so we're all good there.

Taste and sense of smell - I haven't had a sense of smell in ages and my taste is off too. I noticed some improvement after going gluten free which was wonderful.

Stopping supplements - I stopped all mine too when the msg issue popped up on this thread. I've been thinking of reintroducing them one at a time. I did start taking my Vit C without problem (although stopped a week or so before my biopsy).

Sun sensitivity - YES! I am supposed to have nice Italian olive skin, but I have been burning so easily in the last few years. Thursday, my mom commented on how pink my face was...sheesh I just walked from the car to the hospital--in that short sun exposure my face got "pink".

I am loving EVERYONE's new pictures!

Susan - I don't have a lot the sensitivities that others on this thread have either, but I think we've all learned and helped each other, so I'm am glad you are here (as I am glad everyone is here).

Andrea - you might also want to check out gauchos...gaucho pants and the coulottes (sort of the same thing anyway).

I love shopping...can we have our farm within a couple of hours of a shopping mall, lol.

I did help milk my daughter-in-law when she was in the hospital, the nurse told me to help her.... we laughed the whole time.

OMGosh, is there a phobia for this situation, lol.

OMG...I seriously just got bit twice by an ant!! WTF?? I thought only red ants could bite?

I was just sitting here and felt a pinch behind my knee and there was an ant! I flicked it away and a couple minutes later another sharp pinch on my leg and the ant was back!! How can an ant be biting me??

Well I hope you smashed the heck out of the little dude.

Oops, I mean I hope you took it outside and released it into the wild.

Donna--My parent's house to this day is completely off-white inside. Very little hanging on the walls, and neat as a pin! My homes have always resembled one of those little antique-gift shops you see in little towns in the country. Lots of color and things around me that mean something to us. Not messy or cluttered, but quite the opposite of the way I grew up!

Mine is definitely opposite...my parent were both very neat...I'm not! My house resembles my life...a little bit of this, a little bit of that and in total chaos.

missomgophobia !

The Bumble Bar intervention didn't work.

What is the phobio for being afraid to miss a post on this thread? Lordy, pretty soon I won't want to eat or sleep.

Patti - I love redecorating...love it. Have fun!!! I grew up in an all off-white house, lol...when I got my condo I painted my room blue and the spare room yellow, and I thought my father was going to have a heart attack when he came to see. Like Rachel I haven't been able to do much for a long time now, but eventually I'm going to paint the living room purple and the bathroom pink.

I think we all ought to pool our money and buy a huge parcel of land somewhere where we can build our little homes and have a community garden/farm where we grow our own stuff and milk our own cows or goats as appropriate.

Oh Holy Cow!!! I just spent 40 minutes trying to hurry up and catch up...I have to leave in 10 minutes, lol. I'm answering stuff that was so far back no one probably remembers anymore, lol.

And the change in shape is inflamation? What's causing the inflamation? Or I guess that is what the mystery is and what they are trying to figure out, no?

I’m not sure the doctor thinks there’s a change in shape…it just looks that way to me. I asked him what could cause the inflammation and he said sometimes the body just gets inflamed. Wow, glad he told me, lol. I really like this doctor (same one Rachel sees), but sometimes doctors say the darned things, lol. Anyway, I was out shopping today with my mom and saw a book on inflammation. I almost bought it and now think I should go back tomorrow for it. There are all kinds of things that can cause it…(a tiny bit I got from flipping through the book), but the book gave some tips on how to reduce the inflammation in the body.

Evie – happy anniversary and congratulations on 60 years! I’ve only known one other couple that reached 60 years! That’s quite an accomplishment.

Hum, I have a Pur water pitcher that I use...I'll bet that has carbon in it too. I have never seen Poland Springs around where I live either, but I'm going to try. I usually drink bottled water if I'm out and the Pur pitcher water if I'm home. Interesting theory

Okay, that's it, I got to leave again...Can we try to keep the new pages to 20 or fewer while I'm gone. Just kidding, sort of.

Wow ChelsE and Cissie...greek and latin, I'm impressed! I'll try researching the other terms you mentioned on monday when i have a faster connection at work.

Celia - I didn't get to see the new pic.

Love Christina's new pic! Christina, I tried colloidal silver on the advice of my now retired allergist. He wanted me to use it as a nasal spray. I have to say that it was yucky, and I never really found it helped so I just stopped using it. He swore by it though. I think I'm glad now I didn't take it for more than a month and glad I never swallowed the stuff.

Picard - I think Rachel did the hijacking somewhere on page 15 or so, lol.

Donna, I think Ampulla of Vater is just Latin for Ampule of Water. Do you suppose you could find out more about it if you used the English words?

Wow, thanks Cissie! I didn't know that is what it meant. In the body it's the opening (like a nodule) in the duodenum where the bile duct and the pancreatic duct meet. It's supposed to be the size of a pen head and mine is very large. I'll try the English words too. I wasn't able to find anything on the Ampulla of Vater regarding benign conditions, almost everything pointed to cancer or pre-cancer. Hoping the English will give better results, lol.

Picard - I'm so sorry for your loss! I wish there was something to say to help you feel better.

Did they go away, any details are appreciated but I don't want to be intrusive?

I'm thinking that the olive oil I was using could have had soy oil in it, that is really the only source I can think of in my diet for quite a while now.

I didn't give them a chance to go away. I had more than 20 of them and several were large...so they were pressing on all the organs and causing other types of problems, plus the pain was just too much. My doctor said that I would try to wait to menopause when some fibroids naturally shrink, or I could have surgery and that the surgery would have to be hysterectomy because there were so many and so large. Now I still haven't reached menopause yet according to the blood tests my new doctor just ran in February, so I would have been in pain for the last 5 years. Many people have fibroids and never even know it and many who do know about them have no pain or other symptoms...they were just found on routine examinations. [ETA: so I went ahead and had the hysterectomy--they left the ovaries though.]

Not only did I drink lots of soy milk then but I KNOW I had lots of hidden stuff...they put it in all kinds of stuff--even tuna and stuff where you wouldn't think it would be. It wasn't until I started seeing my allergist who suggested I probably didn't want to have soy every day, that I started to look at ingredients in foods and realized soy was in practically everything I ate. I've been drinking a little soy milk again lately, but I am really trying not to have it every day, and I'm being pretty careful about the ingredients in my foods.

Someone mentioned that my intestines could be pressing on my organs including the ovaries (I cant remember who cuz its already too many pages back) but this is what I think too. I think cuz I'm all bloated and obviously having some intestinal distress that its just pressing on my ovaries and causing a pinching type pain.

Me. I just say that because I've had the fibroids which pressed on the other organs and stuff and it was really painful!

Donna,

I meant to answer this earlier....The obgyn was at Camino Medical so yeah....the same place as Dr. R. I'm sure she could have seen the info. from the colonoscopy but probably hadnt been looking for GI stuff prior to my appt. I want her to write up what she saw today so when I see Dr. R again....he knows something is wrong. Last time I saw him he said that my digestion was very slow...what does that mean exactly? Could slow digestion be the cause of what was seen on the ultrasound today? I think its obviously more than just slow digestion but I just dont know what the heck is going on in there.

Good...when I went to my regular doctor for my injured foot a few weeks back, she could see all the stuff from Dr. R, so that's good. I'm actually thinking it's the other way around...the slow digestion could be the result of whatever is making the intestines move around...but that's just my thoughts...I am frequently wrong, lol.

Donna, how is your ampeller vulla (sp?) today?? (I would have to scroll back like 10 pages to find the correct spelling of the body part, but you know what I am talking about, right?!?!) I actually took a lot of anatomy and physiology courses for my major and I don't ever remember this term being mentioned.

Ampulla of Vater, lol. Believe me when I say there isn't much out there on the internet about it (nothing good anyway). Apparently problems with this are sort of uncommom. Dr. R said he's only had one other patient with this. Figures, lol. Dr. R thinks it looks about the same as it did in April, but I think it looks slightly larger and is a bit more oddly shaped. I also can't see the actual opening anymore whereas in the first set of pictures it was obvious it was a duct.

Oh, and if she's not with the same group as Dr. R, make sure she sends you a written report, that way you can have a copy of it to show him and anyone else you might get referred to.

So next she gets the ultrasound machine and does an ultrasound (not the stomach one).

Yah, those aren't fun...had one, not fun!

This is where it gets scary. I was watching her while she was doing the ultrasound and her face totally changed. She was focusing really hard and looked confused. The thought that went through my head at the time was that she looked like she's seeing an alien baby inside me or something.

Wow, I hate that...that's what my doctor did when she found my fibroids...it was a combo of the way her face looked and the way she said it...scared the crap out of me (wasn't hard to do in those days I guess).

After a long time she starts talking to me...still not taking her eyes off the screen. She said that my bowels were all over the place. The way she said it got me scared. It was still like she was seeing an alien baby inside me. She said she couldnt view my ovaries very well because my bowels were extremely active and moving all over the place. I asked her what does that mean? She said she wasnt sure.

Wow, I wonder if that just started...one would think Dr. R would have seen that.

She was still staring at the screen with that look on her face. Then she said that she normally doesnt see anything like this when shes doing an ultrasound. Then she said....well...I've never seen this...ever.

There's that interesting case thing...maybe they'll all take this more seriously now.

She kept looking for a long time w/out saying anything else and then she turned the monitor toward me and showed me the ultrasound as she was doing it. She said "Do you see how everything is moving?" I said "yeah" She said she's never seen anything like that before....it normally is not moving around like that. So the look on her face just made me start crying a little.

That would have scared the crap out of me too!

I'm pretty sure she totally believed me that something is wrong with me after that. It was written all over her face. I asked her if she thought something was wrong and she said "Yeah...but its not your ovaries". She asked me if I'd had a colonoscopy and what the results were and all that. She asked me how my bowel movements were. I told her everything about my loose stools/ undigested food/ constipation. She said it looked like maybe it was trying to digest and thats why it was moving all over the place but she really wasnt sure about any of it.

Is she with the same medical group as Dr. R...the results should have been there. I've never heard of that...wish I had my work connection at home so I could research it.

I asked her what she thought I should do since noone has found anything wrong but I know there is. She said I need to go back to the GI. She still seemed kind of weirded out and unsure of herself...like she was in deep thought. She said "I think its your intestines".

I'd almost prefer they actually say what's going on in their minds...my imagination is so active that I come up with all sorts of things. I know I cried when I left my doctor's office when she found the fibroids, just because we didn't know what they were...she didn't want to say until after the ultrasounds, so I left there thinking I had some awful disease.

Well....imagine that!!

My intestines....who would have ever thought!!!

Don't you wish they would just listen to us in the beginning!

I dont know what to think but I'm not crying anymore. The main thing that is worrying me is the fact that she had that crazy look on her face and the fact that she'd never seen this before...ever. I imagine shes done lots of ultrasounds so it really freaks me out.

Of course the fact that she thinks my problems are coming from my intestines is no big shocker here...but WTF?? Why is it not getting better?

What do you guys think?

Don't be freaked out...I think they're a lot like us when we see something unusual...I'm not sure if I'd prefer they were poker faced or not. Just because it's unusual doesn't mean it's serious or dangerous...the pain could just be that the intestines are moving and pressing on other stuff, like the ovaries.

Did I see Rachel here a second ago or am I seeing things?

I can't wait to hear what the doctor said.

I did see her a while ago. Thought she was even posting, but I guess not, lol.

Where'd she go? Trust she'll be back soon.

Hope so, lol. Was slight more concerned about her appointment than mine.

Donna,

So I assume the doctor thinks everything is going ok?

We haven't heard from Rachel yet...probably still at the doctors since they are always notorious about being behind. It's a real pain in the (backside) with three young kids and waiting and waiting and waiting. You get my point.

He is pretty certain it's just inflammation making the cells look different, but we won't know for certain until the biopy slides are analyzed.

I see Rachel is posting....waiting with anticipation, lol.

Scope went well...nothing really to report yet. Dr. R thought it looked about the same as it did 3 months ago, but I think it looks slightly bigger according to the pictures they gave me. I was a little weak-kneed and woozy this time afterwards, but that cleared up as soon as I got home and ate (okay, had a cliff nectar bar on the way home--by the way, those are good after they've been sitting in a hot car for an hour or two, lol, kind of like a warm brownie). Now, all I have to worry about is getting rid of all the gas the pump you full of.

Miamia - the weight is yours as soon as I can figure out how to ship it to you, lol.

Mango - I'm so jealous. I was supposed to go to Australia last October, but got really sick and had to cancel the trip...but it did lead to me finding out about my gluten/dairy intolerance, so it all worked out. I'd still love to go there one day. When I was younger I moved to Hawaii for about 6 years...that was quite an experience.

Rinne - re the cyst/fibroids...I had tons of fibroids that seemed to appear all at once about 5 years ago...at that time I was drinking a lot of soy milk, plus am sure I had lots more hidden soy in my diet.

Picard - welcome in!!!!

Cissie - welcome to you too.

Vincent - glad you popped in again.

Hum, alcohol...yep had to give up drinking cuz it does weird things to me. I definitely lose my inhibitions, lol. Didn't cause me to get piercings though...did all those when I was sober.

Good gracious, go in for a little endoscopy and there are 15 pages to read!

Okay... question.... should I try a glass of white wine? Haven't had a sip of ANY alcohol in about 4 months.

Hi... my name is Celia

I haven't had a drink in 4 months.

I'm not an alcoholic but was thinking it might be fun.

My thought, don't do it! But then I don't like wine anyway.