Colonoscopy

This Was Number 3

I’ve had an annoying pain in my right side for a while now, never very painful, say 2 or 3 on a scale of 10. It comes, hangs around a week or two, and goes, reappearing a week or two later. Well, three weeks ago, the pain appeared and was a bit more painful and appear in front and back at the same time. I called and got an appointment with the Physicians Assistant.

After hearing my tale of woe and pressing and prodding where the pain was, she asked when was my last colonoscopy. “Eight years ago,” I said. “Well,” she said, “Let’s get a stool sample first and see what that says.” They found no blood, but did find something called Lactoferrin which could be an indicator of Crohn’s or IBS. The colonoscopy was scheduled for today.

Turns out, the last part of the gastrointestinal tract was just fine and I have the photos to prove it… The doctor brought me about eight little souvenir snapshots from his trip along my intestinum crassum. I think he really did this, not as proof of my shiny colon, but because I mentioned that at my first one I asked for photos to put on my blog.

Anyway, what’s with the pain? He said maybe I have a small diverticulum or two that appear when my colon isn’t full of air that might snag something. What he didn’t say was maybe it is all in my head…

For the weirdos and medically curious out there you can read about colonoscopies Number 1 and Number 2. Plus, there a couple of bonus episodes about my one esophagogastroduodenoscopy: 1 & 2.

Patient Zero of the Zombie Apocalypse

Yesterday I had a colonoscopy, and I got cheated and then I got more than I bargained for.

The last time I had one of these puppies, the 4 to 5 hours of trippy liquidness post procedure almost made up for the crappy (figuratively and literally) preparation. But this time they had a new way of putting you to sleep, it is very fast acting and very fast in clearing your system. When I woke up in the recovery room I was as alert as I was when sitting in the waiting room beforehand. What a let down.

We went home I had lunch and then I got in bed to catch a nap. I never did get any shut-eye, about 45 minutes of tossing and turning I started to get cold, real cold. I started shaking and couldn’t get warm. Donna took my temperature and it read 96.9. She filled the bathtub with hot water, no cold used at all, and I bet that the water temperature was about 110°. It took almost 3/4 of an hour in the tub before the shaking stopped. I stayed in the water about fifteen minutes more and when I exited the bath I looked like a cooked lobster. After that my temperature was now reading 103.

I stayed feeling warm the rest of the afternoon and when I still didn’t feel right about 6:00PM we took my temp again and it still read one hundred and three! I took an extra strength Tylenol, drank a cold soda, ate some cold jello and after an hour my temperature had “dropped” down to 102.6°

Next stop was the emergency room. They took my temperature and of course it read 99.1°. Debated going home, but opted to stay and get checked out more thoroughly. The ER doctor ordered chest and abdominal x-rays, looking for clues. He had several vials of blood drawn for lab work along with a urine sample. He also had the nurse fill 3 bottles about the size of something from a mini bar with blood that were for culturing. While we waited for lab results I got a litter of saline in my IV.

The hot bath, the ER visit, the staying at the ER and the ER doc’s testing were all done with consultation with the doctor who did my scope.

No one was sure exactly what was going on with me as these we atypical of what to expect after this procedure. I was in no pain, I just got the chills real bad and then went into the overheat range. The X-rays were fine, no bowel perforations and no fluid in my lungs. Urine was fine. My blood work did show that my white blood count was at 18k, with 10-12 being normal. I obviously had infection of some kind, but no one knew what kind. I either had a simple bug picked up from somewhere and it was unrelated to the procedure or it was related and could get much worse, plus they wouldn’t know about the blood cultures until 12 hours or so later, they wanted to keep me overnight.

We balked at this, I was feeling fine. The ER doc called my primary care physician and after a few minutes the poor schmoe who was on call came in and examined me, he finally agreed to let me go home if I let him administer the first doses of two different antibiotics right there (plus give me prescriptions for filling later.) One was a pill, but the other one took 90 minutes to drip into me via IV. We finally left the ER at 1:30AM this morning.

I have to give a blood sample tomorrow, then see the PCP on Friday and see if my white blood cell count comes down. Of course we are still waiting to see if one of those blood cultures goes mutant, and I become Patient Zero of the Zombie Apocalypse.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1139

I Am Brian’s Colon

Yesterday I had a colonoscopy boys and girls. You don’t need to look that up in any medical dictionary, colon + scope, means they were looking at my innards from the inside. The worse part is the prep. If you have had it done, you know what I’m talking about and if you haven’t, I don’t want to spoil the fun.

During the actual procedure they sedate you and depending on who you talk to who has had it done, that means anything from knocked out to partly aware. When the nurse put the needle full of fuzzy juice into the IV she said to me, “Now think of someplace pleasant you would like to be.” I started to decide which place I thought I would like when the next thing I knew I was coming to in the recovery area. And when I say coming to, I really mean just peeking my head above the fog.

The next few hours I was in and out. I remember my wife feeding me cookies and a Diet Dr. Pepper. My next memory is of being helped out of the wheelchair into the Miata. There is a brief window into lucidity at the CVS where I picked out a book to read. I remember reading some of it during my doctor prescribed bath. I read a little more on the couch before putting it down to go take a 2 hour nap. I was “sedated” at around 1:30 and it wasn’t until around 7:30 that continuous memory was regained. When I went in tonight to get the book I kind of figured that I would have to start all over reading it again, I did, but I didn’t have far to go, the dog eared page marking where I stopped last night was page number two.