A little late, but as promised

The health update.
I'm about to turn 30 and my body is falling apart, or threatening to. It's highly annoying. It seems as though this summer was spent either in a doctor's office, an lab, or travelling to one or the other. I have been having trouble iwth my right ear. I used to have very accute hearing. Even with my back turned, I could hear my students' whispers from across the room and repeat what they had said. Now I just hear the hushed buzzing of secrets, but not the actual words. And there is a constant pressure in that ear, like someone is sticking their finger in it and pushing hard. Sometimes it hurts, mostly it just pisses me off and distracts me. It annoys me and concerns me. So I went to the doctor. She threw lots of scary words and referral slips at me and sent me on my way. I had to have an MRI and then go see an ENT. The end result, nothing. The MRI showed nothing that shouldn't have been there. Good news is, I do, in fact, have a brain. The ENT did some hearing tests, a physical exam and then shrugged his shoulders. He said something like "yep, you've lost some hearing on the right side. It's definitely not as good as the left. But there's nothing physical causing it. That's just weird. I don't really know what to tell you other than come back in a year so we can monitor your hearing loss." Gee. Thanks. So, here I sit with my retarded ear. Now my jaw is starting to hurt on that side, so I'm thinking maybe TMJ (which the ENT did mention but said he was pretty sure I didn't have it.) So I may go back to the doctor and ask her about that. We'll see. I'm a little sick of seeing her face, as I'm sure she is of seeing mine.
While I was there for the ear thing, I mentioned my stomach issues. I have a very grumpy tummy. It hates me, in fact. It hurts at least daily, usually more than once a day. It feels like the right side of my abdomin is trying to claw its way out of my body with a teaspoon and fire. I also have issues with food. When I eat, I usually have a five to 20 minute window before I'm going to have to run for a bathroom, depending on what I've eaten. I've suspected for a while that my gall bladder was unhappy. So, upon giving her this little nugget of information, she scrunched up her face at me and tossed some more scary referral slips at me and sent me to have an abdominal ultrasound and referred me to a gastroenterologist. The ultasound showed I have small gall stones, but that's allegedlly normal given my age and the fact that I've had two midgets. Apparently exercising your uterus can cause gall stones. I still haven't figured out how that works, but whatever. The gastro was a very nice man who can't tell time. I sat and waited in his lobby for the better part of an hour, trying to entertain 2 kids because he (or his underlings) had forgotten about my appointment. Nice. The short of it is that he believes I will have to have my gallbladder removed at some point, but before he hacks up my tumtum, he wants to be sure there isn't something else to blame, since the stones are so small. So I get to have a scope shoved down my throat and more scanning and poking and prodding done of my innards in the coming weeks. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Whatever. I just want this feeling to stop. It sucks recycled ass.
So, there ya go, the health update I promised. Lovely, wasn't it? :)