Friday Home Time

After a long week of work, a walk home in the fading sunlight, despite the temperatures getting cooler, is still enjoyable.

What makes it even better?

An ice cream

Sometimes

 And sometimes, you just need a cinnamon bun/scroll/doughnut in your life.

My favourite doughnut shop, which I have to drive out of my way to get to (which is a great thing), is doing these sticky gooey scrolls and they are divine.

All the Time I Can Get

 When your oldest child lives 600 kms away, you don't get to see them much. Therefore, when they do come up, you spend every second with them.

In this case, he was driving his own car back down (he flew up to get said car), about an 8-hour drive and I wanted to make sure he had a good breakfast, so a 7.30am cafe run was ordered and we had a last meal together 💗

We Have a Winner

 Thanks to the power of modern technology, I knew my results of the HIDA scan and what they meant before I saw the surgeon again.

Here in New Zealand, we have medical apps that allow us to link into our GP and see all medications we are taking, all test results, all letters of referral and all appointment notes. We can also message the surgery on the app and book appointments with our named doctor (although good luck with that one since covid, takes about 10 days for an appointment) and request repeat prescriptions without having to go to the surgery.

So of course, when I got the message that a new result had been uploaded then I took a quick look and bingo, found the issue:

I have an inactive gallbladder.

Your gallbladder is an organ that sits underneath your liver and assists the liver with the excretion of bile into the digestive system when you eat. The bile helps to break down fat. You can live without it; your liver and cystic duct just have to learn to divert the bile into the digestive system a slightly different route. Most people have a gallbladder that fills with bile when you eat and then excretes it out as required, usually with an ejection fraction of about 50%.

Mine is at 16%, so a little slow and useless really

Therefore, when I eat, bile is accumulating in the gallbladder as normal and then it is not emptying properly, this leads to a full gallbladder that can then go into spasm or cramp. Thus, the colicky pain I was getting as it was full of bile and not able to empty it all out.

The solution (according to Dr Google, true nurse here!) is a Cholecystectomy, which in simple terms = let's take that gallbladder out.

Guess my appointment with the surgeon in the next few weeks will be to confirm what I have already established, unless the expert has a different solution (I do trust his knowledge) and that will be some future surgery.

HIDA Scan

 Today I got my nuclear medical scan of my gallbladder.

It involved a 90-minute scan, laid on my back the whole time, with no moving (although I could hold my kindle and read) and at the 45-minute mark, I had to eat a Mars bar and drink a glass of milk, all while lying flat on the bed with a scanning machine above my abdomen.

Firstly, I am not a fan of milk. I will have it with breakfast cereal, but I am not that person that will grab a glass of milk with dinner or because I am thirsty. My baby son, well that is a different story. he will gulp it down out of the bottle stood in front of the open fridge!

Secondly, a whole Mars bar! We are not talking about a mini snack size either, we are talking the whole 50g bar, at 9.30am.

I like chocolate but am not a person who will eat a chocolate bar because I find the feeling of just chocolate in my mouth a horrible feeling and texture. So don't ever buy me a bar of chocolate or Easter egg as it will last forever and bug those around me because it is sitting there and torturing them!

I do however, like Twix and things that are a little bit of chocolate, but nowadays, I seem to manage a snack size bar and don't need a large one, plus I would rather have a jelly candy instead.

So, eating this bar was going to be a struggle. But apparently that was the point, to feed my gallbladder a whole heap of fat all in one go (full fat milk as well) and see how it coped. It was amusing having this nice gentleman stand beside me feeding me a bite of chocolate bar and then offering me the straw to drink milk through.

A HIDA scan is apparently a hepatobiliary iminodiacetic acid scan, where a radioactive tracer is injected and then you overload the digestive system with fat, and it evaluates the function of the liver, gallbladder and bile ducts by tracking the flow of bile.

Let's see what these results show, if anything, but not holding out much hope!

Breakfast

 Unfortunately, I couldn't really understand breakfast on the day I was let home?

Now, if I had been 6 years old and just had my tonsils out then I would have been in heaven 

Ice cream?

But for me, in my 50's and just having eaten not much for the past few days (I have already lost 6 kg of weight through this past 5-week ordeal) then being given ice cream for breakfast just did not go down well at all, and consequently, I didn't eat it.

Dinner in Hospital

 With being nil by mouth for a while and then clear oral fluids and eventually allowed a soft diet, then I was excited to see what I would be getting for dinner, when they allowed me to eat.

Soup, jelly & ice cream and custard would never have been top of my list! 

It was pleasant enough but did lead to me feeling nauseous and not happy, but no pain.

Already

 I totally understand that nowadays, with the cost-of-living etc, that people need to prepare and plan and organise, but Easter eggs in January seems a little far from Easter?

Is chocolate at Easter really that big a deal that people will need to start buying it 3 months in advance, so they have it, or is it just that it is chocolate, and people will buy it in a different shape to eat at any time of the year?

Dragon Fruit

 I have always wondered about this fruit.

What is it, where does it come from, what does it taste like, what do you do with it?

So, I did what any good person does nowadays, I googled it....

Dragon fruit, or pitahaya, is a tropical fruit from a cactus native to Mexico and Central/South America. It has a bright, scaled skin (often red or yellow) and white or pink flesh dotted with tiny, edible black seeds. The teste is often described as a mild, slightly sweet mix of kiwi, pear, and watermelon. It is a source of fiber and can be eaten fresh, or used in juices, jams, and other dishes.

And then I bought one from the supermarket (they were on special) and gave it a go.

Verdict: Don't bother, no taste or flavour. Weird texture and what you would do with it then I do not know. If a good source of fiber, then maybe it would work in a smoothie, but only so you got some extra fiber as I don't think it will affect the flavour or taste in any way.

Google suggested: How to use it

Eaten fresh on its own, added to fruit salads, blended into juices or smoothies, used in jams and ice cream, and can be used to make wine.

So, next time you see this in the supermarket and have that moment of wonder. If it is on special, then give it a go. You might just like it, or not! Me, not so much, I'll pass thanks.

Life is about trying things.

Nowadays, I am all for trying things, pushing myself, finding happiness in the odd places and appreciating everything I see and do.