SO busy!

I am sorry about neglecting all of you, I have just been so busy!

I will be doing a few updates within the next few days, letting all of you know how all of my appointments have gone and how everything has progressed.

February 12th I had my appointment with my cardiologist. I got there a little late, but they were so nice and saw me anyway.

The nurse came in and did the EKG- which are odd tests I think. They put all these stuckums on you and it monitors your heart. I am not sure what they are looking for when they do this, but everything looked normal, even with my high blood pressure. (Even with my medication, my blood pressure is usually high at the doctors office- my primary says I have white coat syndrome–haha get it?)

When the doctor came in, he went over my family history. (Which is the 400th time I’ve had to do that. Why can doctors just have all this information on the same network so we don’t have to repeatedly tell them what diseases our family has and what we’re allergic to? I just want to type out my entire family history/my history and just give them that. It’s annoying!!) (/rant)

So then he asked me about pain- where I feel pain, what kind of pain, how long, during what kind of activity- stuff like that. I told him how when I do Zumba I get a pain in my back on the upper right side. It feels like my back has to crack, but it doesn’t. I have always believed this to be some sort of pinched nerve, but apparently my doctor didn’t think so. It sent him into some sort of tizzy, because he spends the next 20 minutes talking to me about this, but never tells me why. Obviously he thought something was wrong because I get this pain, from what I assumed was just from a pinched nerve!! So after 20 minutes of him going back and forth on what tests he should run, he decided to have me go down the hall and get an echocardiogram.

The echo reminded me a lot of the abdomen ultrasound I had, but she didn’t push as hard, and it was all around my heart. It was very cool! Sometimes she took video with sound, and I could hear my heart beating. It’s like what pregnant woman hear when they get an ultrasound.

I haven’t heard from them yet, so hopefully everything went well!
Next post-Lots of pictures! All about my Endoscopy

And after that- I’ll tell you all about my “nutritionist” meeting and how he is the most arrogant, fat-hating, loves to listen to himself talk, thinks he is GOD, pedantic asshole i’ve ever met!

Barium is *gag*

Barium is super gross. Let me just say that now.

Last week I had my first of many appointments to be approved for my Roux-en-Y gastric bypass.

First appointment of the morning was an ultrasound of my abdomen, then I had to have an Upper Gi. I needed to fast for these, so no food or water. I was SO thirsty!!
So the ultrasound is to rule out a hiatal hernia and thanks to Web MD I found out more about this:


“Any time an internal body part pushes into an area where it doesn’t belong, it’s called a hernia.The hiatus is an opening in the diaphragm — the muscular wall separating the chest cavity from the abdomen. Normally, the esophagus (food pipe) goes through the hiatus and attaches to the stomach. In a hiatal hernia (also called hiatus hernia) the stomach bulges up into the chest through that opening.”
So here is me waiting to get my ultrasound

It was very painful. The technician was really pushing that thing into me, right under my ribs. And it was a continual process- I had to breathe in and hold it, she’d shove that thing into my stomach right under my ribs, and then I had to breath out. My right side was especially painful, and I am not really sure why. At one point I had tears running down my face because it hurt so badly. I felt a little embarrassed to tell her she was hurting me, as my assumption to why she was pushing the device into me was that I am large and it is hard to get a good image because of that.

After that, I was led to a little room and asked to change into a gown (that actually FIT BTW, you have no idea how embarrassing it is to have to wear a gown that is too small, but this one was HUGE on me and I loved it.) and asked to leave my shoes on. I thought the shoes thing was a little odd, but I didn’t argue.

Photo’s of me showing off my super sexy gown, shoes, and chapped lips due to lack of water!

They laid me on a table and got an x-ray of my insides as a base for my other tests. (I am super sad, I couldn’t get any photo’s of this!) Then they moved the table upright so I would stand, with the x-ray at my stomach. The nurse and the resident Brian were both very funny, and helped me understand what they were doing, and talked me through everything. At this point while standing is where I had to start drinking the barium. First, they gave me a tiny cup with a bit of water, and poured crystals in it- I had to down that quickly and not burp. The crystals create gas in your stomach so it expands,and it is easier to see. It was very hard to not burp, but it subsided after a few minutes.

Then they gave me a cup with this white stuff in it. Now- those of you who have had to drink barium understand where I am coming from now. But those who haven’t- think of a drink with a thicker consistency of Pepto Bismol and tastes like chalk.

So Brian says, “Okay you have to take three big sips when I say.” And I think- okay easy peesy. I take a huge sip and instantly start to gag. I manage to swallow it, but I am still gagging, and my eyes are tearing up. The thing about me you have to know, is I gag at pretty much everything. Doing the dishes? I gag. Something smells gross? I gag. Cleaning the cat litter? I gag. So this was pretty horrible. But it is rare that I ever throw up or anything.

So I have to take another sip. Since I knew what was coming, I think my body start to have gaggy feelings even before I tried to take another one. So I sip it, not as big as last time, manage to swallow, and just proceed to gag a lot. They had to stop everything for me so I could take a few breaths. So I do the last one, and compose myself.
So then he tilts the machine so I am laying down now, and makes me turn around 3 times so the barium coats the stomach. He has me go into a few different positions laying down and takes x-rays while he does it. Then he has me lay on my right side (still sore from the ultrasound mind you) and wants me to drink more barium, but its not as thick. It was even worse, because it tasted like the only thing I actually hate: Bannanas. I start to gag just smelling this crap.

Brian says, “Okay, Ashlee. Just three big gulps and we’ll be done.” I tried to gear myself up and tried to push all the icks from my mind, but it didn’t work. I ended up taking two small sips before my gagging frenzy caused Brian to quit and leave me be.
They let me sit up finally, and put all the nasty barium away, which followed by me burping very loudly as soon as I was sitting up. I said, “Well I hope I was allowed to burp now!”

All in all, it was a pretty horrid experience, and am not looking forward to anything else if it is going to be like this appointment.