Well, I am back from MN. I swear, every time I go out there, I feel better, with renewed hope.
My first day was full of testing for the study I was part of. They took 120 vials of blood that day - totally crazy! Fortunately, they place IVs in my arms so it's only 1 poke to get all that blood. Tuesday morning was more testing. The results were basically that my blood sugars are very well controlled and I have no need for any kind of insulin or meds to control my blood sugar. There is always a chance (and actually a likelihood) that I will one day have to go back on insulin, but I am controlling my blood sugars so well that it won't be anytime soon. Yay!
I saw Dr. Dunn on Tuesday afternoon. She is pleased with my progress, though she acknowledges the major issues that I'm still dealing with. Based on my abdominal pain and completely paralyzed stomach, she believes that I have adhesions that are sticking my stomach to the abdominal wall. My local GI is having me increase the medicine that's supposed to make my stomach move (which has made me incredibly nauseous), and is going to re-test the time it takes my stomach to digest food. If that number is still really slow (last time was 5 1/2 hours to digest half of a hard boiled egg), then surgery may be helpful at that time. Dr. Dunn would go in and remove the adhesions and also have a gastric pacemaker installed. It's the same device as a cardiac pacemaker - they just set it to 5 beats per minute instead of 60. I'm not crazy about another surgery, but I would rather fix the cause of the problem than treat the symptoms with massive amounts of medicines. At this point, I have to take 16 pills of this one medication every day, in addition to all the other meds I'm taking. I'll deal with that when it's time - God will lead me to the right answer.
That's about it. We've settled back into a routine in Tucson and I'm trying to increase my activity without doing too much. My goal is to do one thing each day (like run an errand) which gets me out of the house, but doesn't leave me bedridden the next day. The kids are back in school now, which forces me to attempt to parent at least a little bit. I figure the wolves that have been raising them thus far have done a pretty good job, so I can still leave most of it to them. :-)
Im attaching photos of me with Peggy, the research coordinator (in the scrubs), Dr. Bellin, the endocrinologist (with the figure I'd die for), and Dr. Dunn, one of my most favorite people in the whole world. I'm sad that that photo ended up blurry, but I still love her, blurry or not!
