| | For some months now I have been having stomach problems. I started with some unflattering post meal time belching which turned into post meal time puking. I thought it was the stress of international travel+ two week wedding+ moving apartments. But as time went on and I got sicker and sicker my loving husband insisted I go to the doctor.
To make a long two week ordeal short I heard the words I was so used to hearing five years ago during my last gastrointestinal episode... "I don't know what's wrong with you..." This time it was in Chinese, but it still had that same dampening effect on my spirit. I was encouraged to get an endoscopy to get an inside look at the problem within. Now I have had three endoscopies half a decade ago, so I wasn't too worried about the procedure. An endoscope is in plain language shoving a three foot pipe with a camera attached down your throat into your innards.
Taiwan has National Health Care which makes procedures like the endoscope free, opposed to the thousand dollars you would have to wrangle out of the insurance companies and out of your own pocket. However in all its freeness and glory you lose certain luxuries like private waiting rooms and anesthesia. The latter of which bothered me most.
After an hour of take-a-number-and-wait nightmare I was asked to swallow a numbing agent and was given a shot as I was sitting in a room of thirty people doing the same thing. Then I was ushered into a room much like a broom closet and was given a local anesthesia and another shot. Then here came the three foot pipe sans camera. As the ushered the foreign object down my throat I was very much conscious and very much aware. The pipe just kept going and going and going. Through ten minutes of intense discomfort and near pain I winced and prayed. Finally they removed the pipe and ushered me into another room to show me the results.
Turns out that I have between 10-20 small gastric and small intestine ulcers. Also my esophagus is malfunctioning and not closing properly at the end. The cause is still unknown and I will hopefully know in a couple of weeks. So if you could keep me in your prayers that would be great.
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| | Posted 3/18/2008 12:43 PM - 163 Views - 6 eProps - 3 comments
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