At Long Last Hope

After the better part of a year, we finally have confirmation that Dorothy has a Pheochromocytoma and we finally know where it is. Oddly enough, it is on her left adrenal gland. Most Pheos are on the adrenal glands, so why it was that our earlier MRI and CT and MIBG scans couldn't find it there is a mystery. But in Iowa, they found it on two different scans, so now it's just a matter of returning to Iowa in about a month or so (I hope) to have it removed. They have an expert surgeon there who can remove it laparoscopically. After that, Dorothy should go back to being BP spiking free.

I suppose I should be angry that this wasn't found long ago right here in GR, but maybe there was a reason. If they'd found it early on, we would have had a local surgeon operate on it, and would he have done things right? I don't know. It also looks like a lot of Dorothy's discomfort over the last few months was caused by her medication. But at least she didn't have any major attacks during that time, and she was functional. Anyway, I'm just glad our doctor stuck with his diagnosis and sent us to Iowa, and now we have an answer.

On the drive back yesterday, I hit a bird. I'm not sure what it was--two of them landed on the highway just in front of us, getting food. They looked larger than a robin but smaller than a pigeon--maybe doves? As we got closer they took off, but one of them hit my car on the extreme left side of the windshield. It went straight up and pretty high--we hit it at 70 mph. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw it come back down--it dropped like a rock onto the side of the road. I don't like producing road kill, and I only comment on this now because it was so cartoon-like in how it happened--the car behind us must have gotten a pretty funny show.