BRAVO! (and I don't mean "job well done!")

I had two different GI procedures yesterday at an endoscopy center. I pretty much think that if your doctor tells you to do to an endoscopy center, you might want to RUN in the other direction! All the procedures they do there involve putting tubes in your body through places that are obviously not made for that purpose! I had a tube put into my stomach through my nose and then had to lay there for about half an hour sipping water and swallowing at various times so that they could take pressure measurements in my esophagus. For a girl who wouldn't even use nose spray until a year ago, this was quite a feat! I kept telling the nurse, "This is really crappy!" She would just laugh and say that she hadn't ever really had a patient who loved it. This manometry test was all done with no sedation or drugs of any kind because drugs can relax you and affect the result. (A little relaxing wouldn't have been so bad, actually!) The next test involved a tube into my esophagus through my mouth. Same size tube (about the width of a coffee straw), so you would think that surely it would be better than through the nose! Then I saw the thing on the end of it. It was a device called a BRAVO pH monitor, and the whole contraption was about the size of my index finger! And that thing had to go down where??? She offered to numb my throat, which I was more than glad to do! FYI- Benzocaine spray in the throat burns worse than having a tube go through your nose. After much gagging, throwing up, pulling the whole contraption out and starting all over several times, she finally got it where it needed to be. Then she suctioned the little BRAVO monitor (actually about the size of a big pill) to my insides and pulled the rest out. Now I am electronically transmitting data about the pH levels in my esophagus to a little machine I'm wearing on my belt. Crazy huh?! I'm electrified! It has been cool to watch how it is all neutral (7) when I am standing and then drops to 1 (acidic) when I lay down. I could have told them that was happening 20 years ago (and I think I did!), but I'm glad that now they have their scientific evidence. This machine will record data for 48 hours. I'm relieved it is almost over and am looking forward to hearing what the doctor has to say about treatment. I have been dealing with GI problems for as long as I can remember (even as a kid), so having a doctor be so aggressive in finding out the real problem is pretty refreshing. Let's just hope I never have to do either of these two tests again!