More surgery

Oh my gosh, I hate having surgery and I really have it way too often. I am scheduled to have exploratory surgery on July 31st to see what is causing the pain in my right side. I've had this pain for almost a year, off and on. Nothing seems to make it better and I can't really determine what makes it worse. When they were looking at my ovaries via CT scan they noticed a spot on my liver which may be a hemangioma (a wad of blood vessels) which is no big deal. They've now done 3 different diagnostic tests and still can't decide if that is what it is. I am having another CT scan tomorrow to see if it's grown in the past 4 months. When the OB/GYN does my surgery she'll also check out the spot on my liver to see if she can tell what it is.

I did get some good news though. In the time span of one month I've gone from pre-menopausal to post-menopausal. The OB doc says that when hormone levels get to where mine are they rarely go back so since I missed my cycle this month she says I should consider myself done with perimenopause! I guess this is pretty rare, except in cases of early menopause like mine. Now, as for the night sweats/hot flashes, I could continue to have them, although they haven't been as bad the past couple of weeks. We discussed Hormone Replacement Therapy and if the sweats/flashes get worse I'll go ahead and try that. It seems that the bad risks from HRT are really aimed at women over 65 who have been on hormones for more than 5 years. Since I'm 20 years away from that and she thinks I probably only need to be on HRT for a year the risks are very low for me.

I need to run to the hospital and get the barium for my CT scan tomorrow, get the oil changed on my car and the tires rotated, so all will be done when we leave again on Saturday. Guess I'd better get out of the house!