Liver in Waiting

Just in a holding pattern over here. Was supposed to hear back from the surgeon and didn't. I'll call in a couple days if I still don't hear back.

I'm just so conflicted on surgery. Still.

There's a chance the tumors will go away once the hormones feeding it go away. My big bleeder might go *poof*.

Then again, it's been the pea to my princess this whole time. I finally saw the MRI and know where it is now and it corresponds to one of the spots that bothers me when I lay down. I doubt shrinking is going to make a huge difference.

Aaaaand there's a risk the tumors will grow and push me into a liver transplant. Hopefully a low risk, but I didn't work global haz mat shipping for 10 years to ignore the worst case scenario. (Before that I worked with medical equipment, which is equally demanding of perfection. I've had to be anal, is what I'm saying. It was necessary to keep your plane from blowing up and to keep patients breathing. There's a downside to that. Here it is.)

Adenomatosis can go either way. Shrink or grow, but there's no way to know which one will prevail. (To clarify, the medical literature pretty much assumes everything shrinks, but once you're connecting with patients, you find the cases where they grew instead.)

If I have surgery now while it's small...no risk of liver failure. If it grows, surgery to remove a bigger tumor has a 10% risk of liver failure.

You can only live about 2 days with a 'dead' liver.

(For the person googling adenomatosis and hyperventilating after reading all that, lots of women do fine and the tumors shrink as expected. My risk is not your risk. I'm a little more fucked up I think, on many levels. Breathe and go find the less cranky adenomatosis patients. I'm the blog for pissed off bitches. No happy shiny here.)

Even more 'fun,' the idea now is to do everything in one surgery. That just makes me cringe and want to pull the covers over my head. Intellectually, I get it, but viscerally my innards are whimpering in horror.

Talk about butchery!

And the risk of complications must be a bitch when you're cutting out whole organs, pieces of other organs and trying to patch up yet another organ at the same time.

Also, I'm such a stable genius I read a book by a liver transplant surgeon. Oh boy. That gave me soooooo so so soooooo many visuals that do not help.

I think I'm a little squeamish about surgery.

Huh.

Well.

When I'm not freaking about surgery, I am working on losing weight. I've given up on diet and exercise, though. I'm going straight for starvation. I'm calling it medically necessary anorexia.

(By the way, anyone who judges or scolds me, gets to have a liver resection. Chill.)

Why starvation? Partly because my liver still can't handle three squares a day, partly because I just can't be bothered with a strict meal plan, and partly because PCOS just makes losing weight way too hard. It's easier to just not eat.

So I don't eat until around 11-12 and then it's just a Greek yogurt or walnuts and some dried cherries (because I hate walnuts, but they are medicinal for me, and the cherries mask the walnuts).

Then whatever dinner, which might be super healthy or super stupid. Tonight I had homemade spinach artichoke dip and chips for dinner. Followed by ice cream I couldn't finish.

Probably the most calories I've had in a week. So there is stupid food and calories, but other days it's a yogurt and a bowl of chicken carrot soup (no pasta or rice) followed by apple slices and peanut butter for dessert.

Aside from hunger, this is the easiest 'diet' I've ever been on. (Adrenal insufficiency is better yet because there's no hunger, but that's not a diet.)

So just over here, starving, reading all the wrong things, and waiting to hear about my treasonous 'lesionous' liver.