Thursday, December 30th, 2021, 16:56

Mood: Indifferent

I had a HIDA scan today! A HIDA scan is a scan that tests the function of the gallbladder, basically to see how quickly it fills up and how quickly it empties. Normal gallbladder function is that it empties completely in about an hour. I haven't gotten the formal results back yet from my doctor, but I have eyes and know how to Google shit and I'm certain it's normal. Not to mention, the nuclear medicine technologist went "Wow! 95% of the time there's at least a little left over in the gallbladder, but yours emptied completely!" This is super good news. Back in March 2021, I had what my doctors suspect was a gallbladder attack. I woke up at 3:30am to what felt like someone stabbing me repeatedly in the upper right abdomen. I was writhing in pain; it was worse than kidney stones, and almost as bad as childbirth. I was in so much pain I had no idea what to do. It was just me and Siren, and I didn't think to wake her up, call for help, call 911 etc. It was literally that bad. I just laid there for two hours in crippling, agonizing pain. Afterwards, they gave me an ultrasound and it showed no stones in there, and then this scan going as well as it did is a pretty good indicator that I'm not at risk for another attack.

Anyway, the way a HIDA scan works is first they shoot you up with a radioactive material designed to travel to the liver and become radioactive bile. That way, the bile is visible on the scanner. Then, you lay under the scanner, which is kind of like a CT machine but a little bit bigger, and you wait until your gallbladder fills up with the radioactive bile. I listened to podcasts, but there's really no way to make it not boring. After that, they had me drink an Ensure. It sucked bc I haven't had any milk dairy products since about June, and I had an ethical problem with it, but the alternative was to start an IV with medication designed to make the gallbladder contract. I was initially going to do that, but chickened out last minute thinking about how horrible my attack in March was. After I drank the Ensure, they had me wait about an hour to see if the gallbladder had emptied, which it had entirely by that point. Going from the technologist's observation, my gallbladder is actually more functional than most people's now.

I'm always gonna be hypervigilant of symptoms from now on, because a gallbladder attack is literally that horrible--but, for the time being, I'm ok. So that's really good news! Especially since, if I was to get another attack, I would just end up being stuck at the ER indefinitely, waiting for room to open up amidst the endless sea of covid patients.