My Hernia

I first felt a lump behind and above my bellybutton about two months after surgery. The doctor looked at it and said not to worry about because if, indeed, I had a hernia, it would help me get a tummy tuck down the road. No big deal. I figured I'd get an apron, and I seem on the way to that.

In June, I had an MRI to look for metastatic ocular melanoma in the abdomen, specifically the liver, and the radiologists noted that it appeared that I probably had an inguinal hernia. Yeah, no surprise there.

Well...it's gotten bigger. A LOT bigger. And it's starting to hurt. It's a sharp pain, it gurgles sometimes, and if I eat to much it can hurt a great deal. Last night it almost felt like a strangulation. I won't be able to wait two years to get this puppy fixed--I'm thinking it's going to need to be sooner.

January 1, unless something changes, I will be going into the CalOptima program that is administered by state Medi-Cal (the basic, which I have, straight Medi-Cal), and I can be on a network such as Blue Cross or United. The paperwork is about two inches thick and will take some time to go through, so I'm thinking sometime in the early part of 2015 or the spring I'll be having a hernia repair. We'll see. I see my surgeon in early November so we can talk about it then.

But it's huge, it hurts, and when I look down I feel like I'm looking over a basketball--I look pregnant. here's a picture I took two nights ago before I got in the shower:

 That big round thing just below my cell phone camera in my hand (black square), is the hernia. I would look a lot slimmer if I didn't have it. Appearance doesn't mean as much to me as the pain and discomfort--that really sucks.

So does the thinning hair. Bleh.

Just click your heels, turn around, and keep repeating, Jules, "I don't have diabetes. I don't have diabetes. I don't have diabetes."