Am I having a gall bladder attack or being a bit of a hypochondriac?

I was being lazy when I had my meal this morning and didn't measure out what I was supposed to.  I don't know if that was the cause, but I felt absolutely sick to my stomach after coming home in the afternoon and was convinced that I was having a gall bladder attack.

I know, you're completely laughing at me right now, right?  Admit it, you are!  Panic much, Kathy??

One of the biggest fears that someone who goes on Optifast has is that they are going to develop gall stones and will be required to have surgery to remove their gall bladder.  While you do have to have a medical pre-disposition for it, it does not happen to every person on the program.  One of my friends that had this happen to her years ago described the symptoms to me.  I was in such excruciating pain today that, as I was laying in my bed in a practical fetal position, I had my cell phone in my hand and typed in "gall bladder symptoms" in the browser.  It was a pathetic site - me in mind-numbing pain while surfing the net on my smartphone.  While I didn't have every symptom on the list, I had a good chunk of them.  Yet, we all know how unreliable sources could be on in the Internet.  For all you know, I could be a 12-year old boy pretending to be a grown woman with some weight to lose!  That would be a little demented, but, hey, it does happen from time to time.

I did end up skipping my class tonight because of the pain and falling asleep for a few hours.  I'm still in a lot of pain now, but it's nowhere near where it was.  I'm continuing to monitor it and see how I feel.  I really don't know what the cause of it was, but oh my gosh was it beyond.

On the other pain front, the doctor's office called me today about my legs and they want to do a series of more blood panels to rule out some other conditions before sending me to a specialist.  Essentially what's going on is that I have had very painful legs since starting the program in February.  I have radiating pain from my toes all the way up to my hips, although mostly concentrated in my upper legs.  It leaves me with the inability to do most exerting activities, let alone the simple ones, with my legs.  Climbing stairs is a real challenge ... each thigh feels like it weighs 200 pounds each.  Sitting in a chair or getting in a squatting position is very hard without me grimacing.  When I sit in a chair, I sort of have to plop down because of the pain.  The thing is that when I exercise, I just power through the pain.  When it first started, I really thought it was just my body adjusting, going from being sedentary and then adding in all the physical activity.  What it feels like is the day-after pain and soreness (amplified times ten) when a person starts exercising after a long period of not doing anything.  Lately the pain seems to be getting worse and, as I do more physical strength training with my body, the more I have realized something is very seriously wrong, more than just typical aches and pains.  The nurse practitioner at the clinic is stumped and has consulted with the head doctor on staff.  In addition, my hands have these bulging veins coming out of them.  I don't know if that's a normal thing with weight loss or is somehow associated as well.  Take a look at them (yes, I was lame and snapped a couple of pics).

I don't know if the camera really captured the bulkiness of the veins, but I never had them like that before I started the program and it has me in a little bit of freak-out mode, wondering what's going on.  Just as a side note, look how skinny my wrists look!  Who knew I'd lose weight there ;-)  Ongoing battles in my world that I need to remember to take a day at a time.