Another Day, Another Test
Posted on 2004-12-10
Thank you all you lovely people who sent me cards, gifts, e-cards, e-mails and messages for my birthday.
Yesterday I had to go to the hospital again, this time for a barium follow through. [For those of you who don't know what this is, it's a sort of x-ray examination which investigates your stomach and small bowel.]
When I arrived at the hospital I was given a white milky looking drink which tasted absolutely vile - it was flavoured with aniseed to try and disguise the taste, but it also contains the barium so that when the radiographer takes the x-rays at half hour intervals she can see whereabouts in your body the drink is. Once the drink reaches your large bowel you can go home.
The test itself is pretty straight forward, but for someone who throws up when they drink milk and who hates aniseed it wasn't very pleasant. I needed to have an injection of anti-nausea medication to help me keep the barium drink down because if you're sick you can't have the test done, and if this happens you have to go back on the waiting list again. Plus I couldn't eat, drink or take any of my medication for 12 hours before the test which made me feel quite ill anyway.
When the radiographer took the last set of x-rays I heard her say to one of her colleagues that 'something doesn't look right' so I had to have them re-done - this time with a block under the right side of my stomach to compress it. I'm hoping that it's just because the last x-ray wasn't clear enough, but I have to admit that the block needed to be placed right under the area of my stomach which really hurts, so now I'm worried that they've found something else that's not quite right with my body. I won't find out until February 2005 though, which is when my next appointment is.
All day today I've felt extremely sick, more so than usual, which I assume is because I still have the barium in my system, but in a way I don't mind so much. If it means that the doctors can figure out what's causing me to feel sick and get pains in my stomach all the time then it'll be worth it.