I'm back and better than ever!
Suffice it to say that Thursday and Friday sucked big time, but I'll get to that.
First of all, the weather in Seattle is Ah-mazing! Holy crap I'm loving it!
The only problem is I have stupid school stuff to do, so even though I wanted to go hiking today, I don't think that's a responsible thing to do. Boo.
Oh well. Summer is almost here. Which means no school! You better believe I will be hiking the crap out of this summer!
Also, my garden is starting to sprout! It's been so freaking cold lately that nothing was happening, but now that the sun made its reappearance and the thermostat is a-rockin', things are beginning to grow! It's supposed to stay nice for the next several days (fingers crossed) so I'll be keeping an eye out for those cute little sprouts curling up and pushing the dirt out of their way.
Okay, so on to Thursday and Friday.
Thursday was "prep day", which is basically a generic medical term for "you will be miserable and hungry all day".
After taking the kids to school, I cleaned my house and slapped on the pretty as quickly as possible, then proceeded to take the four 'starter' pills at exactly 9 am.
For the next few hours I subsisted on tea (lots of tea!), water, and Jell-o. Now, I'm not a huge Jell-o fan to begin with, and when it's the only "food" you are allowed to eat, it makes it all the more depressing. I really came to hate that unnatural, jiggly substance by the end of the day.
The Husband came home from work early, as I was... shall we say... uneasy at the thought of leaving the house and being trapped in a car for 30 minutes to pick up the kids from school. Ahem.
While he headed out to get the kids, I prepped the gallon jug of electrolyte solution that I had to drink.
GAG!!!
The nurse had suggested mixing it with Crystal Light to make it taste better. I can't imagine what it would have tasted like without the Crystal Light, as my flavored concoction still tasted something akin to a homeless man's bathwater.
I will never, I repeat NEVER, drink Crystal Light again.
Blergh!!!
The only way I could get the electrolyte stuff down was with it being ice cold.
Like, ice ice ICE cold.
That was the only way it was tolerable.
This also made me super cold. At this point, I hadn't slept well in several days and hadn't eaten solid food in 18 hours. Because of this, I was under my electric blanket shivering, which made drinking this solution even more miserable.
But I got through it, and my system was, uh, cleaned out sufficiently...
I didn't sleep at all Thursday night. Partly because I was nervous about the procedures on Friday, and partly because I was still dealing with the after effects of the electrolyte stuff.
Friday morning my alarm went off at 5:50 am. Gag. I hit snooze once, but I just stared at the wall. Even though I'd maybe gotten three hours of sleep (at most) and was utterly exhausted, I was wide awake.
This was it. The day of reckoning.
I got up, got ready to go, and once my mom arrived to watch the kids, The Husband and I headed out.
Naturally, it was a bright and sunny day, and since I had to wear my glasses for the procedure (no contacts, safety precaution), I got an instant headache. I just curled up in the front seat, covered my eyes with the sleeves of my sweatshirt, and grumbled begrudgingly.
Hubs and I were both nervous, so there wasn't a lot of talking during the 35 minute drive to the clinic.
I got there, got checked in, and within a few minutes a nurse came to collect me from the waiting room. She had me change into one of those medical gowns that do nothing to hide your modesty and gave me little booties to put over my socks.
She walked me back to the triage area, where I nestled into a reclining chair with several warmed up blankets (at this point, the best part of my morning!).
It took them three tries to thread my IV catheter into a vein, so I have a massive bruise on my right hand from the burst blood vessel. It looks gross. Luckily, they were really good at what they were doing (minus the missing the vein part) so the multiple pokes with a needle didn't hurt.
After this, The Husband was brought back, and we waited for my doctor to come and explain the process to me. After he did, we waited a few more minutes, and then the nurse came to collect me and bring me back to the procedure room.
This is when I got really nervous. Up until this point, I had thought Hubs could be in the room with me, but it turns out he couldn't. Gulp.
I was shaking at this point, and the nurse could tell I was silently freaking out, so she chitchatted with me about my tattoos. Apparently she goes to the same tattoo parlor I do, so we discussed the different artists there and how it's the best one in the area.
Once she got me situated, IV cords and all, on the exam gurney thingy, she injected the Happy Drugs into my IV, and this is where everything gets a little... fuzzy.
I've had to ask Hubs several times since Friday "so is this what happened?", "they said this right?", "I think I remember this...yes?"
It's weird not being able to trust your memory and having whole chunks of time be missing!
Anyway, after we got home I spent the rest of the day either in bed or on the couch. I felt like crap! Anesthesia affects me quite strongly, so it took a long time to fully leave my system, plus after having not eaten for a full 24 hours, those two components combined to make me incredibly weak and nauseous.
BUT!
Once I did start feeling better, Hubs grilled me the most delicious steak and roasted the best potatoes ever, in celebration of the fact that....
... Everything came back normal!!!!
My colon and intestine and stomach are all good to go!
No polyps! No cancer! No gremlins!
I am waiting for the results of the biopsies to test for celiac's, and a couple other things. But regardless of those results, it will all come down to making changes to my diet. Compared to other, more life altering possibilities, I am more than willing to alter what I eat!
So yeah, all good news!
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