Day 3 and 4 plus overall recap
So I know this is overdue because I was busy and it turned into a long week.
I will start with the recap first so people don't have to read everything if they don't want to.
I am home now. We arrived back in Hoffman Estates last night around 8:15 p.m.
After meeting with Dr. Hart again yesterday it was determined that the tests they ran were not the source of the bleeding. They were unable to pinpoint the bleeding up to this point.There is a small portion of my small intestine that has still not been seen so we scheduled a return visit for July 26 to have a balloon assisted colonoscopy done. So yes I am going back and no they haven't given up just yet.
In addition to going back for the colonoscopy, I will be returning on July 5 for a consult with a urologist and hopefully a hematologist as well. They feel that the next doctors to speak to would be those doctors in order to take next step in case nothing shows up on final colonoscopy.
So it wasn't the fix we were hoping for. I know I seemed a bit naive to think they would solve this in a week. Nothing health wise has ever been easy for me and this is no exception.
The positive to all of this is they were able to rule out 4 or 5 different things. I had numerous tests done that I had never had before and things talked about that had never been mentioned before. It just makes for a longer journey than we had all hoped for.
Now onto the days.
Day 3 was very uneventful. I had two tests done. One was a CT Enterography and the other was an ultrasound. The only bad part was having to drink 3 bottles of Barium Sulfate for the Ct scan. That stuff was straight up terrible. I mean not even remotely good tasting. The kicked is each bottle had to be forced down in 15 minutes. But at least it didn't allow me to milk it.
Once the nasty stuff was down they ran the test which honestly lasted all of 5 minutes. I spent more than an hour prepping for 5 minutes of pictures. It was a fun time.
Then it was on to the ultrasound. The ultrasound was nothing special. Just me sitting there while the tech took pictures from the left side of my abdomen to the center and then to the right side. Again, nothing special. That was the end of the day. My easiest of the three days so far even with drinking the Barium.
Day 4 was pretty easy as well.
I had the Meckel's test at 8 a.m. This test was specific to see if I had Meckel's disease which would have explained the bleeding had it come back positive. But as I said earlier it didn't.
The test started with me getting an IV put in and being pre-treated with IV Zantac. They needed to eliminate most of my stomach acids for the exam. Once the IV drip was done over the 30 minutes I had to sit in the waiting room for an hour. Then I went back into the room where the test was done and they injected me with a radioactive isotope.
I then had to sit on a table for 30 minutes while the test was ran. It was pretty uneventful. My arms had to be above my head which was the hardest part of the whole thing. Keeping them above my head on this table for 30 minutes. Safe to say both had pretty much fallen asleep by time the test was done.
Then it was on to the doctor's appointment at 11:30 a.m.
He ruled out a bunch of things from the tests that they were looking for.
He said there was one possibility which would be very hard to diagnose. He said there are arteries underneath your stomach and intestine wall which can sometimes spasm and shoot blood into the digestive tract.
The problem is that unless a test is being done inside where they see the bleeding as its happening they can almost never tell. It would have to be happening when they are doing a colonoscopy or something along those lines. BUt he said that was a possibility.
He said in all they have looked at about 85% of my digestive tract from the endoscopy and colonoscopy (which was done while I was under anesthesia for the endoscopy) but there is still a portion of small intestine that has yet to be seen which is why they want to do this colonoscopy with the balloons.
In all it was a positive 4 days. I won't lie about that. It is frustrating to still not know but at least we do know a few things that it isn't.
I was continually impressed by this place each day. It never failed that whenever we went into a building I was being shocked by just how things were done. Or like when I went for the ultrasound how there were like 45 ultrasound rooms. Everything is so efficient there and done in a timely manner.
I am pretty sure my longest wait time was 15 minutes. And that was really only because we were 15 minutes early to a few tests. I honestly don't think I ever waited more than 10 minutes past any scheduled appointment time. It was amazing.
I have been to numerous hospitals in my time and this place blows them all out of the water.
In addition, the doctors were pretty cool too. I never once got the feeling from the doctors I saw that they had an attitude like "Well, we don't know what is. Thanks for coming." Everything was it wasn't this but let's check this. Let's move on to this possibility. The attitude was constantly let's figure this out and never thanks for coming.
So I am still hopeful that they will find an answer. Whether it is the GI doctors or the urologists or the hematologists, I am confident that they will find out what is going on. It may take some more time and require some more blood transfusions and iron infusions, but for the time being I will handle those and eagerly await my next visits to try and continue to search for answers.
I finish this series of blogs with another thank you to everyone. It was pretty cool to have people FBing me looking for my blog or asking others where my blogs were. I apologize for getting these up late and keeping people waiting after the first two days.
But again I can't express enough just how happy I am and moved I am by the support and encouragement. It truly does mean the world to me and this won't be my final post. I plan to continue to post some blogs and then I will keep the updates coming from my visits to Mayo.
So for the last time this week I say "THANK YOU!!!" to everyone out there. I know I may not have responded to everyone's messages or comments, but bear with me as I plan to write back and make sure everyone knows just how much the well wishes and thoughts and prayer have meant to me.
So I guess it is wait and see for now. Not the results we were all hoping for, but not the end of the journey either. Nobody said this was going to be easy. I guess I just wasn't sure how hard it would be either. But I know with the help and support of everyone I will get to the end of this and hopefully I can get my "Cured by Mayo" T-shirt that I so badly want right now.
We will talk soon.
Sotti
I will start with the recap first so people don't have to read everything if they don't want to.
I am home now. We arrived back in Hoffman Estates last night around 8:15 p.m.
After meeting with Dr. Hart again yesterday it was determined that the tests they ran were not the source of the bleeding. They were unable to pinpoint the bleeding up to this point.There is a small portion of my small intestine that has still not been seen so we scheduled a return visit for July 26 to have a balloon assisted colonoscopy done. So yes I am going back and no they haven't given up just yet.
In addition to going back for the colonoscopy, I will be returning on July 5 for a consult with a urologist and hopefully a hematologist as well. They feel that the next doctors to speak to would be those doctors in order to take next step in case nothing shows up on final colonoscopy.
So it wasn't the fix we were hoping for. I know I seemed a bit naive to think they would solve this in a week. Nothing health wise has ever been easy for me and this is no exception.
The positive to all of this is they were able to rule out 4 or 5 different things. I had numerous tests done that I had never had before and things talked about that had never been mentioned before. It just makes for a longer journey than we had all hoped for.
Now onto the days.
Day 3 was very uneventful. I had two tests done. One was a CT Enterography and the other was an ultrasound. The only bad part was having to drink 3 bottles of Barium Sulfate for the Ct scan. That stuff was straight up terrible. I mean not even remotely good tasting. The kicked is each bottle had to be forced down in 15 minutes. But at least it didn't allow me to milk it.
Once the nasty stuff was down they ran the test which honestly lasted all of 5 minutes. I spent more than an hour prepping for 5 minutes of pictures. It was a fun time.
Then it was on to the ultrasound. The ultrasound was nothing special. Just me sitting there while the tech took pictures from the left side of my abdomen to the center and then to the right side. Again, nothing special. That was the end of the day. My easiest of the three days so far even with drinking the Barium.
Day 4 was pretty easy as well.
I had the Meckel's test at 8 a.m. This test was specific to see if I had Meckel's disease which would have explained the bleeding had it come back positive. But as I said earlier it didn't.
The test started with me getting an IV put in and being pre-treated with IV Zantac. They needed to eliminate most of my stomach acids for the exam. Once the IV drip was done over the 30 minutes I had to sit in the waiting room for an hour. Then I went back into the room where the test was done and they injected me with a radioactive isotope.
I then had to sit on a table for 30 minutes while the test was ran. It was pretty uneventful. My arms had to be above my head which was the hardest part of the whole thing. Keeping them above my head on this table for 30 minutes. Safe to say both had pretty much fallen asleep by time the test was done.
Then it was on to the doctor's appointment at 11:30 a.m.
He ruled out a bunch of things from the tests that they were looking for.
He said there was one possibility which would be very hard to diagnose. He said there are arteries underneath your stomach and intestine wall which can sometimes spasm and shoot blood into the digestive tract.
The problem is that unless a test is being done inside where they see the bleeding as its happening they can almost never tell. It would have to be happening when they are doing a colonoscopy or something along those lines. BUt he said that was a possibility.
He said in all they have looked at about 85% of my digestive tract from the endoscopy and colonoscopy (which was done while I was under anesthesia for the endoscopy) but there is still a portion of small intestine that has yet to be seen which is why they want to do this colonoscopy with the balloons.
In all it was a positive 4 days. I won't lie about that. It is frustrating to still not know but at least we do know a few things that it isn't.
I was continually impressed by this place each day. It never failed that whenever we went into a building I was being shocked by just how things were done. Or like when I went for the ultrasound how there were like 45 ultrasound rooms. Everything is so efficient there and done in a timely manner.
I am pretty sure my longest wait time was 15 minutes. And that was really only because we were 15 minutes early to a few tests. I honestly don't think I ever waited more than 10 minutes past any scheduled appointment time. It was amazing.
I have been to numerous hospitals in my time and this place blows them all out of the water.
In addition, the doctors were pretty cool too. I never once got the feeling from the doctors I saw that they had an attitude like "Well, we don't know what is. Thanks for coming." Everything was it wasn't this but let's check this. Let's move on to this possibility. The attitude was constantly let's figure this out and never thanks for coming.
So I am still hopeful that they will find an answer. Whether it is the GI doctors or the urologists or the hematologists, I am confident that they will find out what is going on. It may take some more time and require some more blood transfusions and iron infusions, but for the time being I will handle those and eagerly await my next visits to try and continue to search for answers.
I finish this series of blogs with another thank you to everyone. It was pretty cool to have people FBing me looking for my blog or asking others where my blogs were. I apologize for getting these up late and keeping people waiting after the first two days.
But again I can't express enough just how happy I am and moved I am by the support and encouragement. It truly does mean the world to me and this won't be my final post. I plan to continue to post some blogs and then I will keep the updates coming from my visits to Mayo.
So for the last time this week I say "THANK YOU!!!" to everyone out there. I know I may not have responded to everyone's messages or comments, but bear with me as I plan to write back and make sure everyone knows just how much the well wishes and thoughts and prayer have meant to me.
So I guess it is wait and see for now. Not the results we were all hoping for, but not the end of the journey either. Nobody said this was going to be easy. I guess I just wasn't sure how hard it would be either. But I know with the help and support of everyone I will get to the end of this and hopefully I can get my "Cured by Mayo" T-shirt that I so badly want right now.
We will talk soon.
Sotti
posted by Sotti at 6/24/2011 12:43:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home