After waiting for the better part of an hour, I met with the surgeon this morning. He was in a complex that included a hospital and emergency room. A guy was driving a six-seat golf cart around the parking lot that took us directly to the building I needed to go to.

The waiting room was small and comfortable, but a bit chilly. Wearing just a tank top, I wished I had brought my cardigan with me. Anyway, we each used the bathroom off of the waiting room and settled into our seats to play games on our phones when I whispered in his ear, “Someone smells like a smoker."

A second later, a youngish guy sitting with a youngish woman said he was trying to quit.

Oops! LOL, so I apologized and he said it was no problem. The woman even seemed amused. Maybe him hearing me say that will influence him to quit just like I influenced Andy to give up the pot when he read in my blog that I thought he sounded high all those years ago when he left me a voice message.

So the doctor is going to remove the gallbladder, explaining just about everything I was able to Google about the subject of low-functioning gallbladders. It’s going to be 4 incisions, though, and not 5. They’ll be across my lower stomach. They need the other ports for “hands” to lift the liver out of the way and insert tools. I let him know that my TSH was a few points elevated and about the UTI and he said that would be no problem. I didn’t think it would be, though.

They will call to set up a date/time which should be within the next few weeks. Really hope I’m on days when they call! We let them know the 10th was out of the question. The only thing that worries me about having it done before the 10th is whether or not it would throw off my schedule for the dentist but Tom doesn’t think it will.

At the end of today, I take the last Nitrofurantoin and while it seemed to work great at first, the burning is picking up again and I'm not sure the UTI is gone. There are a couple of other things as well. For one, I noticed a slightly greenish tint to my pee when it's usually pretty clear, and I had lower left back pain (a dull ache that would come and go) for a couple of days. Today it hasn't been as noticeable but yesterday and the day before it was. I don't know if there's a connection, though. It could have been a pulled muscle or something. Maybe it's time to do a urine culture?

I updated my docs on all this, and we’ll see what they say.

I’m down 2 pounds since beginning the IF diet, but I know my stubborn dumbass body. It’ll lose 2-3 more pounds and then automatically reset itself to where it was, even if I keep doing what I’ve been doing.