Owie (part 2?)

(I had meant to post thie earlier, but it didn't work out. SO here it is!)

Yesterday I woke up, stumbled out of bed and headed for the potty. I grabbed a prune on the way (I love prunes & prune juice - I'm a old lady already!). After said business was completed, and I was getting ready to leave, I had a sudden sharp pain in my abdomen. I nearly doubled over with it - It felt like really really painful gas, but in all the wrong places.

After a bit of scurrying by Nate and I, we ended up at McKinley health centre (which is the university's clinic, covered by my fees - how beautiful!). I love going to the doctor's, but at one point that morning, I remember thinking that my appendix had broken and that death was imminent.

It's funny now, but not so much at the time!

After being shuffled around to various desks and filling out various forms, I was admitted to see the doctor. He asked me some questions and then poked around a bit and went "mmhmm" a few times. Then he asked me to go and pee in a cup, because he wanted to run some tests.

About this time, I had begun to feel rather sheepish. I have a tendency to use sickness as a way of getting attention - not that I become sick on purpose, but sometimes I exaggerate a bit. I wondered, 'am I being honest? Am I really in that much pain?' The pain, on a scale of one to ten, had been at first an 8, but now it had subsided to a dull ache - maybe a 2. To make matters worse, I had already emptied my bladder that morning, and the cup business wasn't going too swiftly.

However, among the opinions in my head, there was one that seemed to have her wits about her, and she told me that even if it was merely gas, that I was doing the right thing. I had felt absolutely horrid, and that sort of pain just doesn't appear. There was a reason for it.

To make a long sotry short(er)(I've been doing a poor job at that so far), after a urinanalysis, a blood test, a liver test, and later on in the day, an ultrasound (which was not like the ones that you see on A Baby Story), I found out that

1) Nathan and I were NOT pregnant,
2) My liver was healthy,
3) My blood was healthy,
4) My left ovary was twice the size of my right one, and
5) I had a cyst on my left ovary that had burst and left about a tablespoon of fluid floating around in my abdomen - that's what had caused that morning's pain.

The Nurse practitioner then said that I needed to see a gynecologist for a full check-up and then after my next cycle began, to have another one of those intrusive ultrasounds (which I thought was really cool - I was able to see inside of me!).

Apparantly, ovarian cysts are common enough - approximately every woman has at least one during her lifetime. However, just to be safe, and to check out my ovaries again (which are pearl-colored - isn't that cool?!), I am going to have to be under surveillance for the next few weeks. If anything funky shows up, I'm to report immediately to the doctor again.