I was purposely vague about what I was having done because, I have to admit, one of the procedures ranks in the Top....oh, I don't know...ONE most humiliating thing to ever happen to me in my lifetime. But now I can look back on it and... you think I'm going to say laugh, but really I can look back on it and still feel humiliated. I'm not quite far enough removed to laugh. Or really even crack a smile. More like think about it and want to crawl into a hole. So what better place to share my news than on my public blog with all my ones of readers? Here goes...
Long story short, due to my severe anemia coupled with some "intestinal" problems I've been having, my doctor was concerned that I might have a GI bleed. In case you need a refresher in anatomy and physiology, your GI tract is the long tube beginning with your esophagus and ending at your elimination site (to put it delicately). My doctor thought I was bleeding somewhere inside that tube and performed 2 medical procedures today to discover if I was and where it might be. He used a camera on a stick first to look down my throat into my stomach. Then, he had to use a camera on a stick to look, well, you know...
In order to prepare for the "lower" I had to spend 24 hrs. on a liquid diet. Then, last night I had to drink a gallon of liquid ironically named NuLytely. With the knowledge of what that clear liquid was going to do to me, I couldn't even look the pharmacist in the eye when I purchased it. Besides, anything that makes you "go" (you know... "go" as in "to the bathroom") that many times in the course of a few hours should NOT have the word "lightly" in its name. There was nothing "light" about what happened to my lower intestine. Nothing. At all. Except maybe my body weight when it was all over.
I arrived at the GI lab this morning with a sparkling clean colon and no idea what to expect out of the rest of the morning. When Jason and I arrived in the waiting room, we lowered the average age of the patients to about 73. Eventually, I was called to the back, got dressed in a hospital gown, a nurse started an IV and then I waited for awhile.
Once they wheeled me into the endoscopy room, the nurse explained that I was going to have to gargle and swallow some bitter-tasting lidocaine which would numb the back of my throat, then she was going to put a "bite-block" in my front teeth to keep my mouth open during the EGD (upper procedure), since I would be asleep the entire time. Asleep? O praise our Blessed Lord- I was going to be knocked out during the entire thing! Mercifully sedated. Wonderfully oblivious to the humiliation to which my "lower end" was about to be subjected. Angels began singing the Hallelujah Chorus. Or was that the drugs talking? There were no angels, just sweet relief.
With my mouth forced in an open position and my throat numb I had a hard time swallowing. I remember thinking "Am I just going to lay here an drool on the pillow the whole time?" The next thing I remembered was a nurse waking me up asking if I wanted a drink. I asked for a Sprite- not because I particularly like Sprite, but because she listed out several choices and in my semi-drugged state "Sprite" was the only choice I could recall. And the entire ordeal was over. It was truly sucktacular. But I do have keepsake pictures for a scrapbook! Won't that be a fun project.
I'm glad your procedure went well. In the midst of Keith's mess, he had that procedure done as well. I'm pretty sure the stuff he had to drink was called "go-lightly." Who comes up with these names????
ReplyDeleteStephanie