Current Ramblings
Sunday, May 09, 2004
I suppose I should let you all know how I'm doing.
I went in for my colonoscopy on Friday. To start out with, in preparation for this I couldn't eat any solid food from Wednesday night until it was over Friday afternoon. By about 6PM Thursday I'd open the fridge to get another bottle of water and just about start crying when I saw all the food in there I couldn't touch. I do not do well with not eating. Only the severe consequences of failure (i.e. not actually being able to get this colonoscopy over with) kept me in line. I had to start taking a miserable-tasting laxative called Fleet Phospho-Soda at 7, which I attempted to mix with Vernor's to cover the taste. It was recommended that it be mixed with ginger ale or water and lemon juice to "mask" the taste. Those of you who have experienced Vernor's particularly strong variety of ginger ale will appreciate how bad this laxative must have been for the Vernor's to be nigh useless against it. I took Graham out to pick up the Transformers PS2 game and a PS2 to play it on in hopes that the Mini-Cons would distract me. Actually, once I started taking the laxative my hunger stopped bothering me so much. Maybe it was the two bottles of water I had to chug immediately after it. I had to get up for another round of the Phospho-Soda at 6AM, though I got to watch Armada while I tried desperately not to vomit. Then I went back to bed, got up again at 9 for my last chance to drink anything (I couldn't even have fluids within 4 hours of the "procedure"), and caught another hour or so of sleep. Graham and Walky both accompanied Ron and me to the hospital where the clinic is located, despite an impressive thunderstorm that hit right as we were leaving. They checked me in and took me back, letting Graham keep me company while I waited for everything to be set up. I'll be happy if I never have another IV in me for a long time. They sedated me for it, and as of last night the stuff was still messing with my memory a little. I got to watch the monitor, thinking drowsily that I had done a pretty good job with the "cleaning out" part. I didn't really notice when they got to the imflamed part, though I did see them taking samples. I didn't actually feel anything, but it looked painful: a little metal rod came out from under the camera, prodded into the lining of my intestine, and then - SNAP! - retracted suddenly, taking a little bit of tissue with it. They did that a few times. When they were done they wheeled me back into the little cube I started in and brought Graham back so somebody who wasn't drugged could hear the results. I have ulcers in the lining of my large intestine/colon/whichever you want to call it. They don't seem to be large, but there seems to be a number of them, and they're almost certainly what's causing my chronic diarrhea and bleeding. The doctor said it's possibly a sign of a minor case of "a kind of colitis", and I presume he's talking about ulcerative colitis. Y'know, what with the ulcers. They're going to test the samples and get back to me with a solid diagnosis, and then we discuss "treatment options".
So yeah. Chronic illness. It's not a fun thought. I have to say, though, I feel vindicated to have something certain, to have actual photos in my medical file showing nasty red sores inside the gut that's been troubling me for almost three and a half months now. I feel like sending copies to the doctor I was going to when this started, who strung me along for three weeks, three horrible weeks of constant diarrhea and blood and pain and worry, worry more than anything, reassuring me that it was just an infection and if I'd just take the antibiotics even though they made me vomit it'd clear right up. It WASN'T an infection. I'm not crazy. I'm not making it up. I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's the guilt I've always had about being sick because of the way I was treated when I was sick as a teenager or just that feeling of helplessness women get when faced with patronizing old white men in lab coats or what makes me feel so vindicated knowing once and for all that this is something that is a legitimate illness, that there are photos of my insides that show what's wrong with me and nobody can say I'm faking or making it up or that it's all in my head and dammit, I TOLD them so. I know doctors are trained to take care of these things, but sometimes you just know what's going on with your body more than some disinterested old man who just wants to collect his fee and get on to his next fee, oh, I mean patient. And even though I now have to learn to cope with something that will likely go into remission with medication but which may very well also plage me to some degree for the rest of my life, at least I know where I stand, which is better than I've been doing for about three and a half months now.
And now I go watch Invader Zim. Woo, DVD!
posted@9:08 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments