Quacks

Nobody wants to be sick. Well, excepting hypochondriacs, but I would argue even they don't actually want a disease or infirmity, they either want a) to be perceived as being ill for the sympathy or more likely b) just some relief from the all-encompassing terror of the idea that you might one day become actually sick. See, you can't get tuberculosis if you already have tuberculosis, so for the duration, you get a little bit of a break from living in constant dread of it. I was initially going to say "you can't get cancer if you already have cancer," but that's literally how metastasization works. I didn't want to be responsible for putting that idea in the heads of any hypochondriacs who happen to be reading, but who am I kidding, they would have gotten there way ahead of me.

It's weird on a personal blog to have a medical procedure get crowded out by anything else as a topic, but apparently I thought it was much more important to let you know about the time I cried at a soccer game, which happened the same week. I live a full life.

About ten days ago then, I found myself following a familiar doctor's instructions to roll on my side while I was laid out on a gurney and explaining to me the three-part cocktail of drugs they'd be dosing me with before forcing a probe-mounted camera into one of my existing orifii.

It shouldn't have been surprising that it was the same doctor who performed my colonoscopy three years ago I suppose since I've been getting my care from the same medical group, with the same primary care doctors, since 2000. Considering the order of events meant we were going ass-to-mouth, I figured the intervening three years between scopings was more than enough time to give the equipment a thorough wipe-down.

In this case I was being knocked out and probed not for preventative reasons but in response to a persistent complaint that put me in the care of a gastroenterology specialist in the first place. As anyone who has been annoyed (me), inconvenienced or debilitated (not me, thank god) by a chronic issue, the impulse for some kind of actionable information eventually far outweighs any anxiety that might come with a medical procedure. Yes, a lady I didn't know had to stab me in the hand to insert the IV port for my drugs, but that was really the worst of it. I guess I could have been anxious that the primary drug used to knock me out was fentanyl, but I'm neither a habitual user nor a police officer, so I'm not cursed with that casual sensitivity that only cops seem to get.

So yes, nobody wants to be sick, but if they do find something--and I want to emphasize, I'm looking for something treatable here--they can give you a pill or a modified diet or schedule a second (minor!) procedure and you can go back to eating whatever you want without feeling nauseated for no reason, just as a random example. But to my minor chagrin, I've now been told I have a world-class esophageal tract, stomach and duodenum. I don't know what a duodenum is, but mine could apparently walk the runway at Paris Fashion Week, that's how fit it is. They even gave me a printed out page with a grid of pictures of my absolutely faultless innards which was, yes, equal parts as reassuring and gross.

The takeaway is I still have random bouts of nausea not seemingly triggered by anything specific. I have a prescription for a proton-pump inhibitor from my GP, but that's speculative, as much to give me something probably as it is specifically indicated. I also have a follow-up appointment with my gastroenterology specialist for late July. Of course I live in fear now that she's going to tell me that I'm doing great.