Monday, January 23, 2017

Friends and Procedures, Some of Which Are Invasive (the Procedures, not the Friends)

Image result for snoopy friend comic





I have to have a CT scan, possibly followed by a sigmoidoscopy or colonoscopy in just a couple of hours. It sucks because I had to do the prep for the colonoscopy (though  I used a bit of inside knowledge to cheat ever so slightly; it was absolutely necessary, as there was no way for me to even get half of the Golytely down, much less keep it down) but I may end up just having the sigmoidoscopy. The problem here is that the prep for the colonoscopy  is much more involved, but the sigmoidoscopy hurts  like hell because far less sedation is given than for the colonoscopy. (Some Nazi g-men and women don't give you ANY.) So basically there's a good chance I will have the worst of both even with my modification of the cleanse. (If you ever need the modified cleanse, email me. You can afford to try it if your life isn't on the line if the colonoscopy cannot be done as scheduled and has to be delayed a day.) If you barfed all the Golytely up, you'd have the same issue, so it's not like it's the end of the world. and my sharing this simple trick of the trade that you could probably find by googling it if you tried hard enough is not akin to practicing medicine without a license. Still, I desire not to anger the powers that be any more than is absolutely necessary, so I'm keeping the secret method on the down-low and not publishing it, even though it already HAS been published elsewhere.

And as though things are not grim enough already, my sexy [slutty] scrubs are no longer sexy  [or slutty]. All it takes for me is a mere weekend of being sick and I lose what few curves I had in the first place. This is a sad state of affairs.

At least I have Meredith with me, and when I didn't have her, I had Sophronia and her little sister Celinda, who lets me raid her closet. I even had Cool Guy, Kal Penn, Raoul, and Troy Ming for awhile (as well as Tim, who played his guitar for me even though we're not speaking to one another; it's a weird relationship). Being with friends can make the most horrible things endurable.

11 comments:

  1. I will only do one more colonoscopy as a routine procedure, unless one is clinically called for. It is a rather miserable thing to go through. I would insist on being unconscious.

    Best of luck and I know it will all come out in the end. I couldn't help that.

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  2. Feel better, Alexis! GoLytely sucks and seems really draconian by 2017 standards. I'm glad you have inside knowledge to make things go ... a bit more ... lightly.

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    1. All 23 days, of 2017 that is.
      My brain is obliterated ... I digress

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    2. Becca, obliterated brain or not, I wish you were here.

      I was having a text conversation with the judge. I think he thought O was a wimp and was coming just short of calling me in it. I hd said earlier, and meant it, that in the grand scheme of things, my health issues are minor. I said when it reached the colostomy point, I would cry about it, but until then, I wouldn't. Then I asked him in a later communication at what age a person grows out of wanting his or her parents there when procedures are happening or in living through the discomfort afterward. He said he was never that way. He didn't want to inconvenience others in that way. I then asked it was maybe a mel-female thing and if his daughter would feel differently. He answered that his daughter had never once asked to come over when she was sick. Merely being sick at home with a cold or whatever and recovering from a procedure are different, but I let that one go. I know nothing about his kids' medical history. He left me with the distinct impression that the Ferrer re just a bit more matire, selfless, and generally superior to me in manners of managing one's health. Perhaps such is the case.

      I didn't tell him that the procedure didn't go as smoothly s planned and that the friend who had come to take me to the hospital and to bring me home was long gone. My brother wasn't home. There was no one to as much as get me tylenol from the pharmacy, not that such would have helped in the least. I didn't mention that the non-very-competent gastroenterologist air blasted a lesion so hard that he, at the vert least, left it paper-thin and in a horribly painful condition without prescribing anything for the pain once the fentanyl administered at the time of the procedure wore off and was refusing to do so once contacted. I didn't even know it when I texted with him, but I have to have another CT scan and sigmoidoscopy on a couple of hours to ensure that he didn't actually puncture the colon at the site of the lesion with the excessive blast of air.

      An endoscope was inserted into my colon, into which a scalpel was inserted. it wasn;t needed for the procedurem but the doctor managed to nick my bottom with the scalpel. There was debate as to whether or not stitches were needed. they went with a buttefuly closure. I could not get a clear answer as to whether or not the scalpel ever left the endoscope when inside my colon, which hs a huge effect on the chances of the would becoming infected. i got a tetanus shot and had the wound cleaned thoroughly, which wasn't terribly comfortable, and I have to stick to showers as opposed to baths until the wound is healed. Only God knows if it will scar. I'll need to get mederma once it is ready for that.

      I'm on an OBGYN rotation though currently out of commission. I called the person who pages the two OBGYNs with whom I'm affiliated and asked the paging service not to wake them but to PLEASE give either of them my number and tell them it ws an emergency if they were woken for any other reason. On the sECOND call, the paging service actually followed the directions. The oBGYN told me to drive to the hospital. I had to stop en route to have dry heaves, and of course a police officer came upon me and thought I was DUI. I was eventually able to convince him to call the doctor at the hospital, who backed my story, so I at least didn't get taken to jail.

      The OBGYN gave me a painkiller shot, which helped greatly. I'm going son for a cT scan. Then the OBGYN is finding me another Gastroenterologist because the other one ws an idiot. a decision will be made as to whether or not cauterization of the lesion is necessary.

      I'm not supposed to be home alone afterward either way , and I don't know if Matt will be finished yet.
      It has been a disastrous weekend, stretching into the week.

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  3. Bowel prep is a foretaste of hell. But as I knew the anaesthetist doing mine-(I had consciously chosen a gastroenterologist NOT of my acquaintance only to be informed that both of the gas men he used worked with me)I was fixated on an ultra clean bowel prep. The first sentence of the report always concerns the ease of view and I dreaded getting "the view was inadequate as the bowel prep was sub-optimal", kind of like a very bad school report.

    I was more interested in that first sentence than the actual presence or otherwise of pathology!!! Thankfully both were a pass.

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    1. Part 11 (par 1 actually follows:

      I read in a recent med school student's memoir that the importance of adequate PREP was both so that a clear view of what needed to be seen was available and to avoid making the gastroenterologist and the flunky med student sick. I agree that it is utterly important that the view be adequate, and I'll even concede that I desire to avoid making my gastroenterologist queasy, though I doubt for an experienced g-man or woman (unless pregnant) that if the prep results in an adequate view, the nausea factor any but the most non-existent prep would make them ill; it simply might interfere with the intent of the procedure. With the flunky med school student, however, he could screw himself with a 40-watt bulb if he didn't like the quality of my preparation and if it made him even slightly nauseous. He's a non-person in the equation, just as I am a non-person in each procedure in which I participate, except when the doctor doesn't get there on time and either I or the nurse and I ARE the doctor.

      I was offended enough by what I had read in that recent student's memoir that I refused to allow a flunky med school student to scrub in on my colonoscopy. He was a 4th year -one I didn't know well - and he was permitted to view my CT scan. I found him a bit too know-it-all and condescending considering it's not a sub-internship and he's not looking into gastro as a specialty. With my personal experience related to the topic (more than half of my life) plus my being a superior student both academically and practically to him, I didn't see how his assistance was needed, and I felt he should gain his experience on someone other than I. In addition to being condescending, he's known as loose-lipped. Anything about my gastric system or the nude body parts that are visible in the course of the exam is something that I personally will decide which parts of my body and medical history may be shared with the medical school student body at large. It is not his decision. I could have, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of HIPAA violations in my favor, allowed him to unleash his loose lips, but I don't wish to be involved in litigation against my own school. He can learn his lesson the hard way with someone else who doesn't have to work and learn here.











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  4. I know what you mean exactly. I remember reading the line from a colonoscopy report when I was 16 and barely in undergrad, and realizing the significance of it and the embarrassment if the preparation were declared not having been adequate, particularly with my gastro-man at home. My uncle convinced me, though, that once everything coming out was translucent pale green (the color of the prep itself) my prep was more than adequate and anything else was between overkill and actually bad for me, and that someone had probably overprescribed considering my body size. My gastroman is humane and only did it once.

    I used tricks of the trade for the local guy, whom I am firing for reasons I shall detail in my next blog. I quit eating solids since I couldn't keep anything down anyway. I drank 1.5 liter of grape gatorade watered down with and additional .5 liters of H20, fortified with the proportionate mixture of Miralax twenty-four hours before the scheduled time of the procedure. (Artificially flavored grape drinks turn green in the colon; the precise shade is dependent upon the strength. The more watered-down, the more perfectly translucent bile-green - just like PREP) the remaining contents of the colon are. Two hours later, I took five bisocodyl tablets, downing them with diluted grape Kool-aid which also turns (voila!) translucent olive-to-lime green in the intestinal tract depending upon its strength. The only thing competing with the color of anything in my colon was blood, which I couldn't do a damned thing about other than wash out as much as possible, but fresh bleeding was inevitable. Anyway, Dr. Strangeglove had not the slightest idea my preparation was not entirely that slimey, disgusting Golytely. Score: Alexis 1, Dr. Strangelove a big fat ZERO. I shall blog shortly to explain why Strangeglove is history.



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    1. Part 111 of this Unwieldy and Convoluted explanation:

      I allowed a third-year student on a gastro rotation to scrub in for my procedure. he's someone I know and trust, and , in the end, I was glad he wa there to verify what I though I remember about how the procedure had gone. I'm not concerned about putting my colleague in position between myself and Dr. Strangeglove. I would do the same for him, and it is his job to speak the truth. I'm not suing anyone. I'm merely establishing why I should have no medical , professional, or subordinate role with Dr. Strangeglove.

      In this rather incestuous fishbowl in which we're learning the practice of medicine while also being treated ourselves when it becomes necessary, we need to be able to make the call with no repercussions when we're not comfortable having peer participate in or observe a procedure when we have become patients in the mixture. Being a patient is stressful enough without worrying about what a peer will think of one's body, and with whom a potentially unscrupulous peer might choose to share share such opinions.

      I made myself unpopular with Dr. Strangeglove, but, through a few acts of marginal competence in addition to poor bedside manner, he made himself even more unpopular with him. I will fill out the necessary paperwork to ensure that I'm never seen in any capacity by this doctor, nor am I placed in a position to work under him either directly or indirectly so that he has no contribution whatsoever to my grades or evaluations. He will still, in a roundabout way, have the ability yo impact my rankings slightly by inflating the grades of my closest competitors who fall under his jurisdiction if he is sufficiently lacking in scruples to engage in such behavior, but it's a slight enough overall effect that I can live with it, especially since there isn't a damn thing i can do about it anyway.Wouldn't it be nice if all a person hd to worry about was to find a better doctor if he or she found the services of a particular practitioner to be substandard? Medical school, unfortunately, is for from a microcosm of a perfect society.

      Enough. I'll explain more in my next blog.

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