Somehow, despite numerous drafts, I never managed to finish any entries in November or this month. It's not that I didn't have anything to share - I just always feel I should embed pictures, otherwise it's boring. And I really didn't have any new art or anything much in the visual realm to share.
In October we went to Illuxcon, and two days after we got home I had an abdominal CT scan. The CT scan was ordered because I had tested positive for a weird and rare kind of tumor - a pheochromocytoma, an adrenal tumor that causes your body to produce extra adrenaline, but is usually non-cancerous - and the only way to start looking for it was with a lengthy CT exam. I had multiple scans with and without contrast, which amounted to about 15 minutes inside the CT machine. Most CT exams only take a minute or less. I've been inside of one a lot this year as we've attempted to figure out what was making me sick.
For years I've had weird blood pressure issues which we eventually attributed to POTS. It's a fancy way of saying that standing up makes my blood pressure plummet and sometimes I faint. Usually I half-faint and hyperventilate, which is very dramatic and upsetting for everyone (especially me). I think the hyperventilating is my nervous system trying to kickstart my adrenal system, which usually regulates your blood pressure so you don't fall down when you try to stand up. People always tell me to stop breathing like that, but it's not voluntary. Anyway, this year my blood pressure just started going up. And up. And up. Sometimes it was recorded around 210/180. Most of the time it was 150-160/90-100. Neither of these are good but ones a lot better than the other.
Blood pressure medication didn't help much, it just kept it from going over 170/110, which is still pretty bad. I was on the max dose and it still wasn't working. At that point they stop telling you you need to exercise and eat right, and they start telling you to stop exercising and eat as much salt as you want because that's not the problem. And then they send you to an endocrinologist to figure out why your hormones are all messed up. Most people don't get the answer that I got - pheochromocytoma - and most people can control their blood pressure with lifestyle modifications or a different medication.
I've never had a CT scan of my abdomen before despite my many health challenges since childhood. I was a little nervous - what if they found something else was wrong, or I had a bunch of problems, or cancer - but I didn't expect what they DID find.
A kidney stone 6 or 7 mm in size was completely obstructing my left kidney, and I had stage 4 (last stage) severe hydronephrosis. None of my blood work indicated a kidney problem, but suddenly everything made sense to my genius endocrinologist. My other hormones were all low, my renin pretty high, and my fractionated metanephrines two times off the charts because my kidney and the attached adrenal gland were too distressed to do their jobs. Their jobs include producing hormone that regulates blood pressure and androgens for hormone production. My whole body was a mess because one kidney was in peril.
But you know what's really weird? The kidney didn't show any damage and the right kidney seemed to have totally picked up the slack. I never had any serious pain that would catch my attention from the kidney stone, so I never guessed I'd ever had one.
It's taken years to get to this point. I started having real problems with my blood pressure 3 years ago, and problems with adrenaline surges 4 or 5 years ago. No one knows for sure how long I lived with my kidney like that, but one thing has stuck out: My left leg used to swell up terribly when I sat for any length of time. I started about ten years ago and I'd tried everything from compression garments to lymphatic treatments. Nothing had made it stop, somethings did improve it.
My left leg hasn't swelled up since the 6th, when I had a procedure to remove the stone.
This was something that caused me a lot of discomfort and cut into how many hours I could spend sitting at my desk and painting. It made standing and painting particularly uncomfortable. I spent a lot of days sweating in compression leggings and a lot of mornings trying to wrestle my body into them. I thought I'd have to live with my jumbo leg forever.
I have a renal ultrasound exam on the 27th to determine if I'm actually through this ordeal, but my fingers are crossed for a clean bill of health. My blood pressure is already better and I'm looking forward to getting off blood pressure medication and resuming hiking and other activities. I'm also looking forward to painting more once my energy stabilizes and stops fluctuating so much from one day to the next. I still do my weird half-faint hyperventilate thing, but I'm hoping getting off the blood pressure medication will eventually eliminate a lot of that. Who knows? Maybe when it's all said and done my POTS will go away.
Life is weird. Bodies are weirder. Let's hope 2025 is a little less on the weird side and a little more on the productive and life-moving-forward side.
See you on the flip side.
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