Monday, December 15, 2008

Medical mumbo jumbo

As Goblin and I suspected (and the reason I held off posting on the situation for so long), modern medicine is not an exacting science. It's more about guessing and playing CYA in case there is finger pointing to be done.

My husband was experiencing some 'digestive difficulties'. This is not uncommon for him, but it had gone on a very long time, so he sought a medical opinion. Said medical opinion eventually involved an MRI and blood tests. The MRI showed some 'masses' in his abdomen. The blood tests did not show any of the flags for cancer, but they wanted to biopsy the masses to be sure.

When Goblin was three years old, he had his spleen removed after a car accident. Today's surgery showed that some of the pieces of the spleen had escaped and were enjoying a happy existence sponging off his bowel and other abdominal organs. These spleen cells are apparently not causing him any harm, so they decided to leave them as they are.

Forty five years after the supposed removal of his spleen, Goblin is still playing host to colonies of spleen cells in his abdomen. The doctors were very happy that it wasn't lymphoma. They were also very intrigued at the happy existence of these independent spleen tissue masses living in his abdomen.

I guess Goblin officially qualifies as a medical freak at this point. No one seems worried about these masses now. My only question is why it too forty five years for anyone to notice. He was in the hospital for a digestive issue when he was 19 or 20. No one noticed then. Then again, maybe 'technology' wasn't up to noticing then. Or, maybe, the colonies were too small to notice at that point.

Maybe by the time Goblin is seventy, he will have completely regrown his spleen! Then, he can go into the medical history books.

4 comments:

briwei said...

Wow. Not the expected outcome, but I am glad it's nothing serious.

Where do you think his spleen will be by the time it is fully regrown?

Summer said...

I'm glad they found out about the escaped spleen cells but are they the cause of the digestive distress?

Kitten Herder said...

Summer - They seemed less interested in his digestive distress once they dismissed the cancer diagnosis. After he recovers from the surgery, he'll probably have to go back to his primary and start over. Ain't 'medical science' grand?

barbie2be said...

so glad it wasn't anything "serious"! good for goblin! i think i would rather be a medical freak like him than a freak freak like i am.