No, that's not a cheesy video to keep the attention of medical school students. That's the final diagnosis, as of my discharge from the hospital on Sunday afternoon, of What Went Wrong With My Body In August And September: "Parathyroid adenoma, hypercalcemia, pancreatitis."

Basically, one of my parathyroid glands was enlarged and overproducing calcium, leading to excess calcium in my bloodstream, leading to all of those lovely symptoms that kept me from eating and drinking and holding anything down, including inflammation of the pancreas. Attempting to eat or drink anything, however mild, just triggered the pancreas, which only made things worse and kept the spiral spiraling downward.



So I'd gotten back to work at the beginning of September, but the next week, the week of Labor Day, I started feeling queasy again as the week wore on. On Friday the 11th I ended up calling in sick to work because I threw up and figured I'd better not risk it. Good call, that. I spent the entire weekend sick to my stomach and wondering why I was back to Square One with this so-called stomach virus that was supposed to be gone by now.

Sunday I went into the Urgent Care and got some kind of stomach-care and pain-pill stuff with an advisory to see my physician on Monday and go to the emergency room if I got worse before Monday. I got worse--stabbing pains in the gut--as I was waiting at Walgreens for prescriptions. My sister (Mother of Spammy) said, "You are going to the ER. Now." And, since she was the driver :-D I went to the ER.

The upshot of that visit was that my gallbladder looked "sludgy," so they thought, "Aha! It's a bad gallbladder! Problem solved!" So the ER contacted my physician on Monday, and my physician set up a referral appointment for Tuesday to a surgeon at the affiliated hospital, with an eye towards examination and possibly getting day-surgery gallbladder removal.

Tuesday morning, the surgeon examined me, frowned, and said, "I don't think it's your gallbladder," and proceeded to admit me to the hospital for further examination and treatment. The latter included such stabilizing essentials as rehydration and dealing with various imbalances such as ungodly low potassium. (Anyone out there who's ever had to get a potassium IV or drink liquid potassium, you know what I'm talking about. UGH.) My body, after a month and a half, was a bit of a wreck, and that needed to be tended to before any kind of surgery could be considered.

Meanwhile, testing revealed that my calcium levels were shockingly high, which is NOT a healthy situation in the human body. "Where the hell did that come from?" was my supremely diplomatic response to said revelation. "I do eat yogurt and stuff, but I don't think my intake's excessive." The doctor assured me it had nothing to do with dietary intake, but rather indicated a malfunction in the body.

To make a long story short, they narrowed it to the parathyroid gland which got removed in surgery on Friday the 18th, along with a rather large (and benign, as was the parathyroid) thyroid nodule. I still have the right side of my thyroid gland and parathyroids, so once they adjust, I should have healthy thyroid functioning without needing to take hormones. Yay.

Now I just have to deal with my body trying to rebalance itself, and the weird symptoms of low calcium, which is a common aftereffect of thyroid and related surgery.


Got discharged Sunday afternoon, and am now at home recovering from both illness and surgery. I am definitely feeling better as far as being able to eat again, though with a bit of trepidation because, you know, that happened before and then it all went bad again. But this time they do seem to have removed the root cause, not just alleviated symptoms--that renegade parathyroid looked pretty nasty, from what I was told--and my body, beneath the fatigue and all, does feel fundamentally stabilized this time. And of course I've got follow-up lab work and exams in the next few weeks, so it's not like they dumped me at home and said, well, good luck, see ya. ;-)

Special kudos go to my sister, her daughter Spammy (the now 8-month-old baby from the pictures), and my best friend for keeping me company in the hospital all week, even when I was crabby and didn't see the point of them hanging around when I kept falling asleep and wasn't a "very good hostess, anyway." ;-) Ah, sick-brain...

Not writing anything in stone at this point, but assuming the whole body chemistry balancing act falls into place over the next few weeks, I hope to be back at work sometime in mid-October. Meanwhile, I am recuperating. Rebuilding. Regaining strength. And damned grateful to be alive.