44 ounces

That ovarian cyst-ish feeling I blogged about a while ago still hasn't gone away, although it's not causing me extreme pain anymore. There's just a dull ache that sometimes ratchets up to more but is generally constant. After 5 weeks of this nonsense I caved and went to my gynecologist, who felt what he thought was scar tissue but sent me for a pelvic ultrasound to check things out more thoroughly.

Monday, I'll be drinking 44 ounces of water in a half-hour period ending one hour before my appointment time. This procedure hugely inflates the bladder and so displaces the intestines so the ultrasound can more easily see what's going on in there. As far as I'm concerned, this prep qualifies as torture, especially to a woman whose main symptom is feeling like she needs to pee all the time.

I discussed with the scheduler whether or not I needed to do it. I actually went back in to ask the doctor about it, and he was sympathetic but insisted that I really do.

Now I have half a mind to just blow it off but that's irresponsible. I'll only be miserable for a couple of hours, and no lasting damage will be inflicted. I'm trying hard not to create some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy of doom, but it's not easy.

I'll be spending all weekend trying not to think about it.

Update: It wasn't so bad. This was the first post-hysterectomy pelvic ultrasound I've had, and it turns out that not having a uterus makes it easier on two fronts: first, there's more room for all that liquid, and second, the ultrasound itself is much less complex since there's no need to examine that major organ.

The right ovary looked a lot bigger than the left ovary, but that could have been because of zooming or the angle/perspective. I was able to watch the scan but I was not attentive enough to remember how big the two ovaries were while the tech was measuring them. It will be 3-5 days before I hear anything, which means it could go to next week.