What do you get when you mix a bad digestive system, not eating anything for 2 1/2 days, taking a barium swallow test and having a colonoscopy?
Disaster.
Tuesday I had my barium swallow test. My system really wasn’t wanting food, so the only thing I ate Monday and Tuesday was some basamati rice and miso soup. Wednesday I stuck to my clear liquids only diet (aka drinking water, tea and bone broth) and almost threw up like 7499847837 times taking the Suprep. I’m really not a baby when it comes to eating or drinking anything. I truly will eat almost anything. But, honest to God, Suprep is the grossest shit I’ve ever tasted in my whole life.
Yucccckkkkkkkkkkkkk omg yuck
My colonoscopy was scheduled for 7am and had to be there at 630am. I woke up at 550, got dressed and headed out with my Dad. Once I was laying in my bed, with IV in arm, all ready to go, I realized I wasn’t nervous at all. I was happy this was happening and hoped that at the end I’d have some answers. They wheeled me in, the doc asked me some questions and to sleep I went. The next thing I remember is telling the nurse I would only drink their juice if it was 100% juice with no additives-haha. Then they kept asking me if I did the prep and only had liquids the day before.
Uhhhh yesssssssss? Believe me. I choked that shit down. And it was DISGUSTING!
Apparently the barium was still all in my system and coated my insides like cement. They couldn’t see anything at all. So LUCKY ME I was going to have to do the whole thing all over. I told them I would do any of the other prep kits, NOT SUPREP.
The office gave me Moviprep, they scheduled me to come back the next day and have ANOTHER colonoscopy at 1:30pm with a different doctor.
So I left, thinking that I was going to be on my way to eat something delicious, buuuuuuttt nooooo. I had to only have liquids and then start the prep all over again. This time I would do the prep at 5pm and then 5am the next day.
I went home and slept for like 5 hours. I really would have loved to have slept for the entire day, but my Mom made me get up and drink some bone broth. Sleeping away this nightmare seemed like the best option, but my family wasn’t having it. So I tried to catch up on school work and sit outside to enjoy the beautiful sun. I got through a lot of lectures that I needed to catch up on, but I was constantly looking at the clock. 3pm… 4pm.. 4:30pm… then it was 5pm. Ughhhh I was SO FREAKING NERVOUS. That Suprep was so gross I didn’t want to do it again.
I mixed the Moviprep and it smelled lemony/limey. This one was a big container and you had to drink 8 ounces of it every 15 minutes until it was gone. So for the next hour and 15 minutes I drank this delicious drink. It by no means was good tasting, but it was 98924 times better than the Suprep. The only thing I didn’t like about it was it was thick — but I got it down and was feeling satisfied with myself. I didn’t want to throw up and it went by pretty fast. Whoop whoop!
About an hour later I started feeling sooooo weak. Chills started running up and down my body and I was freeeeezing. I had some card orders that I needed to fill and was trying to complete them. I would get exhausted just cutting out some dye cuts that I’d have to lay down. I’d place one feature, then lay down for 20 minutes, then get up and glue it, and then lay back down, and finally I gave up. I just did not have the energy to do it.
I started getting hungry and decided, F it, I’m going to bed. It did take me a bit of time to get to sleep because my tummy was rumbling, but I’d much rather take that then the pains and nausea I was having before.
I set my alarm for 5am, 5:15am, 5:30am, 5:45 & 6am. Thinking ahead I mixed up the prep and had it sitting next to my bed. My alarm went off and I started chugging. I’d take my best guess at how many chugs were 8 ounces and then I’d shine my phone on the container to see if I guessed right. Usually I was WAYYY off haha I’d chug the 8 ounces and fall back asleep for like 5 minutes… then my alarm would go off again. Once the container was done I felt like yelling ‘VICTORYYYYY!’, but instead I fell back asleep…. whoops. Next thing I knew it was 6:45am and my Dad was yelling at me for falling back asleep. He was right. I still needed to drink 16 ounces of water. Before I had fallen asleep I had washed the drink down with at least 8 ounces of water, but I had to get a lot of fluids in me before 7:30 (which was my cut off for my procedure). Of course the lovely moviprep started working (YUCK!) and as I sat there I started chugging water. All this barium HAD to get out of my system. There was no freaking way I was ever doing any of this again in the near future.
By the time 7:30am rolled around I drank another 16 ounces of water and had an apple juice juice box (because sometimes I like to pretend I’m 5 – lol). I tried going back to sleep, buttttttt the moviprep wasn’t having it. So for the next few hours I prayed that all the barium would get out of my system.
We left for the procedure and walking in I felt SO NERVOUS. I wasn’t at all nervous the day before, but this time I was nervous because what if all the barium wasn’t out of my system. The same nurses got me all preped and the same anesthesiologist wheeled me back to the procedure room. They were joking with me back in the room that I was a pro at this now and if I just wanted to preform the test myself-haha.
The anesthesiologist yelled “Julie’s Colonoscopy Take 2! Let’s Gooooo!”, clapped his hands and then put me to sleep. I woke up to the nurse telling us that there still was barium in my system buuttttt the doctor took extra time and tried flushing it out so I wouldn’t have to come back AGAIN. Thank you Dr. Lou, You have no idea how many extra points you scored with me on that one. From what they could flush away, and from what they could see, they saw no visual evidence of colitis or crohn’s, but they did take some biopsies. He said sometimes you don’t see anything visually, but the biopsies tell a different story. I’m crossing my fingers that they don’t. The doc said that he didn’t think the problem was with my colon or lower small intestines, but that the problem must lie at the top where my stomach meets my small intestines. He said that I should schedule an endoscopy for next week.
So off we went back over to see Kim, the nurse who schedules appointments, but THANK GOD this time we weren’t scheduling another colonoscopy, we were scheduling an endoscopy. I’ve had 2 or 3 of them previously, so I know they’re nothing like colonoscopies – in the prep sense.
I left feeling so grateful and relieved that they didn’t see crohn’s or colitis. Honestly, from what I’ve been experiencing, I truly believed that was going to be the diagnosis. To be honest, I was a little disappointed as well since I was leaving and I still didn’t know what was wrong. At the very least I had a few more things ruled out on the list.
But, the very biggest thing on my mind was FOOD. I just wanted to eat something. I know that in the grand scheme of things 2 1/2 days of not eating really isn’t THAT much (the body can live for weeks with no food, days with no water, second with no air!), but I was HUNGRY.
I already had planned out that I was going to make a quinoa burger, I’d sautee mushrooms, tomatoes and lettuce to put on top, and put it all on top of some toasted ezekial bread. Yummmmm yummm yummmmmmmmm. (I may have ended up making some brownies too).
Well, about 15 minutes after I ate I remembered why I didn’t mind not eating so much …. my stomach started hurting so bad and I got nauseous again.
#neverEndingCircle
So I may be forced into starting a juice cleanse if my system doesn’t want to handle food. At the very least it seems like I’m back to soups and cooked/pureed veggies. Yummmmy (don’t be too jealous!)
Wishing You A Pain Free Day!!
