The source of my frustration:

I've been poked, prodded and subjected to various indignities involving small plastic cups since July 4th when I went into the ER with severe pain in my abdomen. Imagine someone blowing up a huge balloon in there. Ugh.

All of the tests have come back normal / negative - no infection, not pregnant, not h.pylori or any other such nastiness. Some of you may recall I had an endoscopy in January, which showed no signs of an ulcer. Likewise, the ultrasound last week didn't find any gall stones.

The docs still think it's my gallbladder rebelling against me since I have just about every single possible risk factor for gallbladder disease. Therefore, tomorrow I go in for something called an HIDA scan (I found out more on the actual procedure from Jennifer's blog, Quidite, than I did from the Mayo Clinic's website). It appears that the worst part of the test itself is that I have to stay relatively still for an hour or two ... or even longer. Now that I know what the procedure involves, I'll just make sure that I don't have any caffeine, so as to avoid the squirmies, and that I do bring my MP3 player.


(HIDA Scan bed)

My big fear is not the possible nausea or pain from the test (I've been living with it for a while now), but that they won't find anything with this scan. Of course, that doesn't mean it isn't my gall bladder - it just means they're back to "I Don't Know." I don't like "I Don't Know." It stresses me out and messes with my regular schedule. So wish me luck for a diagnosis. Even if they tell me it means surgery, I would welcome that over, "Sorry kid, you'll have to live with the pain a little longer until we can figure out why you're such a weirdo."