You put your left hand in....

...and hopefully it comes out feeling better, eventually?

Here's hoping, at least! I going in for surgery on my left hand in a few hours.
I am super nervous, but also very hopeful.

I am also in a lot of pain EVERYWHERE ELSE ON MY ENTIRE BODY and I would really like to know why! At least when I am unconscious from the anesthesia, I won't feel it for a short while! Yay!

I won tickets to see a band that some friends have, that I really love and have not seen in far too long, which ALSO happens today (I entered the contest before I knew I was having surgery and I won om Tuesday afternoon, heh!) and I am hoping to make it.

I think it is going to depend on whether or not I can find a friend with a vehicle to bring me and take me home. We shall see.  Fingers crossed....well, not really...part of why I need surgery, I can't move my fingers...but you know what I mean. ;-)

I did see the throat surgeon today and she says that I don't look infected right now, but we do have to keep an eye on it.  If it DOES keep getting infected, I am going to lose the gland on the left side altogether, and that is scary in and of itself, but even MORE scary because the stone on the RIGHT (which is still in there) is so large that if THAT starts acting up (heaven forbid!) there is NO way to get the stone out without taking the gland out, period. (Taking the gland out means  slicing my neck open by my throat. The mere thought freaks me out.)

Anyway, I should stop thinking about that for now. Have not come to that bridge just yet, thankfully!

So much happening, and so little time/strength to write!

I don't even know where to begin anymore. I guess I can start back up sort of where I left off...
The ENT doc in the ER sent me to a specialist. (or rather, told me to go to one, so I found one, and I did) The specialist agreed that Sjogren's Syndrome was a possibility and that my endocrinologist should order tests.
She did. I do have a positive ANA (Anti-Nuclear Antibody), which had been shown before, but whatever. She says its a "low- positive" or something like that, but she talked to my kidney doc, and he told her to run the test for the Sjogren's antibody. After waiting anxiously for over a month, we found out that I do NOT have said antibody, which is great on one hand, but on the other hand, it kind of puts us back at square one.

The throat doc ordered a neck CT with contrast, and also a vocal therapy evaluation. My next appointment with him was right after my vocal therapy evaluation (at which the vocal therapist said that she would be recommending vocal therapy because I have scarring on my vocal chords) The throat doc said that they found that I have stones in my salivary gland. IN ALL OF MY SALIVARY GLANDS. I didn't even know this was a thing. He said to go see another particular doctor as soon as possible, and he said that only a few people in the world do this surgery, and she is one of them. That was a scary thought. I saw her, and she said that the stone on the left is HUGE and that it is in the duct, completely blocking up the gland. She said that the surgery would be hard, and that she couldn't book me then because despite having been on high dose liquid antibiotics for 10 days, it was massively infected, so she prescribed more.

I went back today, and she said that it is much less swollen, so that is good, but the closest surgery date available is in the middle of December,  so judging by how often this thing has been causing over the past however long its been, I am in for a very long couple of months. Ugh. I am scared out of my mind.

I can not even BEGIN to explain all of the GI stuff, eye stuff, and migraines that are going on at the same time as this. I can't try to tell you why I have gained 15 or so pounds in the past month despite the fact that I am eating relatively well, and exercising a LOT, but I have. I don't get it, and it scares the living daylights out if me. I have been swelling up again too. Nobody can tell me what the heck is going on.
I will try to update more later, but I am freezing, so I need to go try to warm up.