{"id":151,"date":"2008-09-12T11:35:33","date_gmt":"2008-09-12T19:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rayivey.com\/wordpress\/?p=151"},"modified":"2009-01-06T15:14:30","modified_gmt":"2009-01-06T23:14:30","slug":"you-say-potato-i-say-gastroenterologist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rayivey.com\/wordpress\/you-say-potato-i-say-gastroenterologist\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a>\"instagram\"<\/a>

So I go in to see the same Gastro who helped me with my anemia when we first discovered it two years ago.\u00a0 I told him that taking Prilosec and staying away from caffeine, chocolate, alcohol and lying down on a full stomach wasn’t cutting it, as my hemoglobin is now 8.5 (it’s supposed to be 15).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He said that we had to assume there was another place I was bleeding internally beside the stomach issue we already knew about.\u00a0 Great.\u00a0 I reminded him that I was one of those White Coat Hypertension types (scared of everything medical).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“Here’s what we’re going to do, ” he said.\u00a0 “You’re going to go into Cedars and swallow this gigantic pill with a camera inside it.\u00a0 The pill will take movies of your upper intestine and we will look for problems.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Great.\u00a0 I asked him, \u00a0 “So, like in the colon, are there scary lethal things we can find there in the upper intestine?”\u00a0 Of course I meant cancer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“It’s been two years and anemia is your only symptom and you had a mysterious weight loss [obviously], ” he said.\u00a0 “Doesn’t sound like cancer.\u00a0 Sounds like any one of a bunch of benign causes.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I informed him that that was the right answer.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the meantime, he tripled my iron and gave me a choice of two drugs.\u00a0 Basically the choice came down to which gastroenterological discomfort would I rather have, diarrhea or constipation?\u00a0 [Yay.\u00a0 Welcome to my life.]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I chose constipation.\u00a0 Which, for the record, thanks to assiduous extra fiber intake, I have NOT suffered from so far.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0For a few days I noticed no difference.\u00a0 In fact, I felt terrible.\u00a0 Normal walking was a struggle.\u00a0 Staircases were agony.\u00a0 Of course, my current gig is, uh, floor support<\/span><\/em>, which, just like it sounds, requires lots of walking.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I got really blue.\u00a0 Have I waited too long? I thought.\u00a0 Have I lost my chance at good health?\u00a0 Am I doomed to either die young or be unhealthy and feel miserable all the time?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then something lovely happened.\u00a0 I got out of my car Wednesday to walk to the building where I’m working, and I noticed that it wasn’t quite as hard as it had been before.\u00a0 Maybe the new drug just needed a few days to kick in, I thought. I’ll wait and see tomorrow.\u00a0 Maybe this is a fluke.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Thursday morning.\u00a0 Not a fluke!\u00a0 I feel even better today.\u00a0 So now I’m hoping that the drug is helping plug up the hole in my stomach so I can start to accumulate some decent red blood.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Tomorrow is my birthday.\u00a0 All I want is some hemoglobin.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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