Rest Of A Silly Tale, Before Esophagus Expels Food After the endoscopy I was very incoherent and tried to figure out the words that were being asked of me. I think I said words back, and hopefully some of them made sense. I sort of remembered being in cardiac care (I got to watch my heartbeat!) where I was on oxygen. I had to get some chest x-rays and do a few barium swallows in order to determine whether things were taken care of. You see, with all of my lurching around, I could have helped tear open my esophagus. My throat felt like it was still blocked, so I asked for some water to ensure an opening existed. They wouldn't do that for me.

Anyway, you have to stand up for the barium swallow x-ray (and drink this very heavy chaulky liquid that responds to x-rays). I yelped "I'm gonna be nauseous!". They brought over some pan and I puked bile into it. Sweat started dripping down my face and I was ghost white. They gave me some cold towels to put on my head and I started to see spots and get extra dizzy. It looked like the various medications and sedatives were too much for me. Anyway, I managed to do the barium swallow once. Luckily, one test was enough to see what they needed.

If the esophagus rips it can cause lots of problems, not excluding paratinitis. Basically if left unfound and untreated, you get gangrenous from the inside out and it's usually not recoverable past a certain stage. I would have needed invasive surgery to sew up my esophagus. What did the x-ray show? Well, since I'm blogging, the answer is that there were no rips and 100% of the barium made it to my stomach.

After more waiting they admitted me some time on Saturday. I was rooming with a 75 year old recovering colon cancer patient with diabetes and other problems. He was hilarious. He hit on every single nurse, and he frequently asked the male PCAs where the female nurses were.

So, when you are on an IV drip for a few days, they take blood every few hours, and you get your blood pressure and temperature checked practically continuously and your roomate snores and yells in triumph at 4:00 AM because he was able to make some farts...you don't sleep well.

On Sunday I had 2 rounds of normal X-rays and a very extensive round of new Barium Swallows. I had 7 large containers of barium. I would probably equate the total quantity I had to ingest to about 13 cups. Meanwhile I wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything the whole time (besides barium). Not even ice chips :(

The end of the story is that I got released from the hospital at about 12:41 PM on February 12th, 2006. Why is that significant? Because precisely 25 years before that moment Kelly was born. So, I get to go to the doctor a few more times and probably have more surgeries to get this taken care of. I'm on a liquid diet until further notice.  ¶ 12:31 PM