November 30th, 2006
I got all distracted telling you about the alternative medicine and nutrition thing and forgot to mention how I spent Monday afternoon. That’s when my stomach emptying test was scheduled.
So, I went to the Nuclear Medicine department at the hospital and they had me eat radioactive eggs. I’m not kidding here. I had to wear a bib and latex gloves so as not to get any on me, only in my mouth and the guy doing the test stood like 5 feet away from me while I was eating them. They were kind of flat scrambled eggs like they’d been made in a microwave and they definitely needed some sort of salt and pepper. They weren’t green, much to my disappointment. I also got to have a slice of regular toast and some Dasani water.
You do have to eat it all in 10 minutes so there is some pressure there and I’m kind of a slow eater. I didn’t eat all of the toast or drink all of the water.
Then you have to sit on this table with your legs wide open and hug this machine that takes an x-ray of your insides — concentrating on your stomach. Then they take on from your back. They did this again 50 minutes later, I think and then 20 minutes after that. Really I’m not sure on the timing. I do know that the way I had to sit messed up my leg muscles and I walked funny for 2 days and the radioactive eggs sat in my digestive system ruminating for 2 days. Talk about your toxins. Not particularly fun with all the news about the dead Russian spy who’s been poisoned by digesting radioactive something or other…
Anyway, I won’t know the results until next week or something. I’d have to check my calendar. The question isn’t how fast the eggs left my body but how fast they left my stomach.
Tags: digestion, stomach emptying test, nuclear medicine, green eggs, wellness
November 9th, 2006
It’s been a day.
The office is being repainted this week so I’ve been breathing in fumes since Tuesday. To top it off on Tuesday I forgot to take my morning meds which was like the 3rd or 4th thing I forgot that morning and by that time I really couldn’t go back home again. It’s been a week of forgetting at least one or two things every morning — stupid time change.
Anyway, normally missing one day doesn’t really affect me. Missing two in a row is a nightmare. Well, apparently those days are over with the new blood pressure medicine. Or it could have been the Italian food I picked up on the way home. Who really knows at this point? The real point is that Tuesday night I started feeling sick to my stomach and completely bloated, like stick me with a pin or I’m going to explode bloated. I cradled my throw-up bucket all night and despite taking my usual night meds, including the ambien, I didn’t get any sleep — and no I don’t think that it had anything to do with being anxious about the elections — and really, what’s with Mainers? Why wasn’t any money spent on getting Snowe out and why do they love her? I don’t understand.
But I digress.
So, Wednesday, I was exhausted but feeling less queasy. I ended up going home early and went straight to bed. I kind of slept for about 12 hours, but I had the runs so there was a lot of getting up and running to the bathroom.
Today I felt rested and not quite so queasy or “runny” but still bloated and thanks to the paint fumes, I’m feeling like a nice migraine. Yay.
But that’s not all. Today I went to meet the GI Specialist. We discussed my condition, my history, what’s going on, etc. He thinks it might not be IBS or IBF or Crohn’s or colitis or whatever the previous doctors have labeled me with or whatever is trendy these days. He thinks there might be something wrong with my stomach muscle. He said it sounds like my stomach muscle might not be squeezing properly and digesting properly and food might be hanging around way too long in there which would cause the bloating, gassiness, acid reflux, 90% constipation/10% diarrhea episodes.
So how do they determine if this is the case, you might wonder.
Well, they feed you radioactive food after you’ve fasted for 4 hours. Then they take x-ray pictures every 30 minutes of your insides to see how fast your stomach and digestive system processes it. Yum.
Having fed on the Green Kryptonite before (only it was white and chalky and tasted very, very nasty no matter what they claimed), I’m fairly sure it’s going to be an unpleasant experience about 4 - 8 hours later.
In the meantime, he wants me to start taking the Prevacid twice a day since it isn’t really working completely anymore.
This would be o.k. except that when I went to get the prescription filled since I’m out of Prevacid, it turns out that my insurance doesn’t agree with the doctor. It thinks I should only have 30 of those little pink and black capsules in a 30 day period. Prevacid apparently isn’t cheap either.
Since tomorrow is a holiday and it’s late in the day, I now have to wait until Monday to call the doctor’s office and see what they can do to straighten it out.
The good news is that my BP was only 106/70 a week after switching my med so my mother can stop harassing me about getting it checked. 
Tags: wellness, acid reflux, stomach emptying test
