Fatboy, Stop Your Bellyaching or Get Enteroclysis

I’d love to, but my belly still hurts. When I eat or drink, when I’m not occupied with other activities, or other activities put my abdomen to use, nearly a third of the pain of Wednesday returns. Aside from little updates on how I feel, I promise this will be the last you hear of this blockage for a while, ‘mkay? Before you keep on wondering as you read on, missing my good writing material while wondering, yes, those are my intestines a few days after my December blockage (December 29th, to be exact). I got it in just before our insurance would have made me pay a huge deducible (unbeknownst to us, but I wasn’t willing to risk it and pushed for a 2009 test date).

Let’s be positive for a second, since I am an eternal optimist, according to the resident expert on Fatboy: Beautiful. On a super awesome note, I kept track of my weight through the ordeal, and I must say, Fatboy responds well to being fat. Here’s what happened. Pre-blockage: 134/135. Post blockage: 125. Last night: 129. This morning: 131. It was clearly sweated weight loss due to the combination of using a heating pad whilst lying on a leather sofa all afternoon and night long. I forgot to weigh myself tonight, but I’m certain it’s at least 133, just 2 days after going hours consuming little to no calories.

Trouble continues

I can tell you exactly where the trouble continues: right at my bottleneck spot. The continual cramping and straining against the mass that had me blocked makes for a very tender area of gut. I don’t know if the mass needs to be big and is continually stretching and straining the smooth muscle with the peristalic action.

Digging up the name of the procedure for the x-ray above, I found these symptoms that I e-mailed to my coordinator on December 28th… a full 8 days after I was released from my observation stay:

Occasional severe cramps of a few seconds when shifting positions, eating, or drinking something of varied temperatures.

Hmmm. sounds like what I said earlier in this post, doesn’t it? Like I’ve done this before? Yeah. The last time I made these complaints, I was sent for a test called enteroclysis. It was absolutely miserable, but mainly because my one request was screwed up by someone. I needed twilight sedation. I have a very deviated septum and a gag reflex that cannot be stopped.

Skip the next two paragraphs if you have a weak constitution

I knew from past experience what would happen when they attempted to place the NG tube. I asked for orders to be drawn up and was told that radiology had to do that because they were in charge. I show up on the day of the exam and told me that I needed written orders for twilight and that they didn’t have any sedation techniques at their disposal in radiology. Great! “But don’t worry, the tube is thinner than a spaghetti noodle,” she said. This woman has clearly never eaten spaghetti. It wasn’t much thinner than an everyday wooden pencil. It was, but not by much, and would certainly not be confused with a spaghetti noodle, or two, or three.

Once I’d shown them how much acid my stomach has when I haven’t eaten all night or morning and made them apologize profusely as I coughed, gagged, cried, and puked all over their sterile equipment, the head of the area that day was able to place the tube and begin the test. The liquid was cold, which is a very odd feeling in your nose, then your throat, then your stomach, then your gut. I would take a Gastrografin enema over a repeat of this test any day, but not from the cold, but the NG tube. It was over in what I would say was 5 to 10 minutes, much to their surprise. They said they normally stop when the contrast gets to a certain point, which it had – very quickly. They wanted to know which section of my intestines were removed at birth. I told them I had meconium ileus and jejunal atresia, they were looking at the fluoroscope of my entire lower digestive tract… you tell me. I was in no mood to be asked questions of this sort at this point.

The end

In the end, all of that was for waste. The entire test was inconclusive and I ended up getting better over the next month. That’s what I have to look forward to this time, too, I’m sure. Okay! I’m done bellyaching, at least in writing, if not physically.