Can't help you with any useful advice, Joe. Sorry. But your chronic illness reminded me of an interesting time in my life that I hope will amuse you a bit.

I taught human A&P in a JuCo for a while. A good friend of mine was a pathologist. He and I were indulging in brain-killing adult beverages one time and I mentioned that I thought it was too bad I couldn't use primate tissues and organs for gross anatomy lab since health professionals probably wouldn't be concerned about sheep brains and pig eyes. He said he had just the thing and told me he had all sorts of pickled spare parts that I could have. Also lots of X-Ray film. He said he'd remove any identifying information from the (patient confidentiality) and give me a trunk-load of pieces and parts.

A few days later he called and asked that I meet him in the parking lot of the JuCo so he could give me his largesse. I got hearts, brains, muscles of various limbs, bones long and flat, and a bunch of organs and guts. Many of them were diseased, which brings me to your malady. he pulled a section of dieseased intestine out of a Vlasic pickle jar (really) and showed me so X-Rays of the same tissue inside of the previous owner.

So here we were standing in a parking lot looking at jars of pickled guts and he says, "What do you think a deputy sheriff would think of this?" So we closed everything up and carried it into the lab.