My Pancreas has a Name

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We are back out in town (again) thanks to my pancreas (again).

In my last post I mentioned that it was just gently waving at me so I wouldn’t forget it.  For the last month it has decided to gently punch me, so I will give it lots of attention.

I have decided that my pancreas has developed Narcissistic Personality Disorder. 

I guess in “reality” it has developed autoimmune pancreatitis, but no matter what you call it, it's continually disrupting my entire life.  I can only eat small portions of bland foods, and we have had to come out of the tribe so that I can be monitored more closely by our mission doctors. At this point we have no idea when/if we will be able to go back to the tribe full-time. John Michael will still make trips in and out to continue with discipleship and teaching the Hewa church, but we know that as family we will be at the mission center for an indefinite period of time. And worst- case scenario, if I do not improve in the next month or so then we will have to go back to America so I can been seen by a rheumatologist and gastroenterologist.

So… yeah… basically, my pancreas is taking over all our lives and making our world revolve around it. I would say that is pretty narcissistic.

Rather than thinking about how our lives might totally change forever and dealing with my emotions in a healthy manner, I decided to do what I always do and deflect with humor and sarcasm.  

The treatments for autoimmune pancreatitis have not helped, so maybe if I just give in to my pancreas’s need for attention we will see some results. Like maybe I will give it it’s own facebook, twitter, instagram, and any other social media pages that I am not cool enough to know about right now.  I have no doubt that its pages will be filled with duck-faced selfies with all my other organs being cropped out of every picture.

A couple of people suggested that I give it a name, which I thought was a great idea. At first I decided that because it was being pretentious and annoying, it needed a hipster name, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my pancreas actually has a celebrity doppelganger and must be named after her.

You see in both the MRI I had done in Australia in May and in the ultrasound I had last week, the “tail” of my pancreas was the area that contained the inflammation and therefore enlarged.

In the strictest of medical terms, my pancreas has a fat tail. 

So with the fat tail, the constant need for attention, and being totally high-maintenance, I have decided that my pancreas shall be named Kim Kardashian. They are basically twins, so this is really the most appropriate option. If I had any of the images from either the MRI or ultrasound I would put up comparison pictures, but I don’t so you will just have to take my word for it.

For now, here is a picture of the human Kim Kardashian*. Now just picture her tiny and living underneath my liver and you will know exactly what pancreas Kim Kardashian looks like in my body. 

If my pancreas was on social media, I'm pretty sure this is all you'd see.

* It was actually quite difficult to find a picture to add here. The human Kim Kardashian has blessed the internet with many MANY duck-faced selfies, so quantity was not the problem, but finding one where she is wearing adequate clothing was kind of like searching for the lost city of Atlantis. Like most treasure hunters, I had to decide if I wanted to invest so much time in something that probably doesn’t even exist.  But, alas, I prevailed. So take heart all those who hunt for the treasures of myth and legend! If human Kim Kardashian can be found in clothes on the internet, then anything is possible!