Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Day 153

Yesterday I had my second surgical procedure of the year. An esophagogastroduodenoscopy! (Or an endoscopy for short).
It was great fun, let me assure you. They put me to sleep and stuck a camera on a tube down my throat to look at my insides!
Long story short, for about the past 2 and half years I've been having digestive problems ranging from bloating to acid reflux, and my mom thought it might be related to some kind of dairy allergy, so I went to a gastroenterologist and after hearing about my problems he wanted to perform this endoscopy, which happened yesterday.
My 24-hour prep for this was actually a lot more intense than my 24-hour prep was for jaw surgery. They wanted me to shower the night before, sleep in clean pajamas and clean sheets, not eat after midnight, but drink enough liquids to produce a urine sample in the morning.
I was worried about producing enough urine in the morning, so I drank SO MUCH WATER before I went to bed. I drank so much water that my bladder acted as my alarm clock in the morning (which was actually a tender mercy, because I was supposed to wake up at 5:00am but my alarm clock didn't go off!) And then for whatever reason I was supposed to do the urine sample at home, so my mom grabbed a mason jar from the cupboard and I went in that. I was able to produce well over a full jar... the nurse was very impressed. And then she told us about this one time when she had a grandma patient who wanted her jar back after they had taken the urine out of it. Probably because she wanted to can some peaches for her grandchildren later. GROSS.
The procedure only took about 15 minutes, but I still had to get an IV and anesthesia. So that was fun. The IV wouldn't work in my right hand, even after a few minutes of digging around, but it worked right away in my left hand. And I also got some blood taken for blood work while I was asleep, so I woke up with three puncture holes in my hands.
For the rest of the day, I had a headache, it hurt to swallow, my hands hurt, and overall I just felt crappy and sad (boy, anesthesia side effects are just the funnest thing in the world!). But it was still far better than jaw surgery recovery!
I won't know if I have any allergies until I get the biopsy results back next week, but I do know my esophagus is a little messed up. It's lined with the equivalent of popped blisters. Bascially it's inflamed from acid reflux or whatever and so we need to figure out a way to fix it.

My esophagus is the #2 in the upper right-hand corner
All of my other digestive organs are lookin' good.
And this is still not as bad as jaw surgery recovery.

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