I'm exhausted...
So, it turns out that the barium (is that what the shit is called?) x-ray is hell. It's like a horrible form of torture that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemies...not that I have any, as far as I know.
To begin with, I had to fast from midnight on. Not so bad, honestly, though I did make sure to have my nightly bowl of chocolate ice cream finished juuust before the clock ticked over to 12. The no-water thing almost killed me, because...believe it or not, the person who used to live on coffee and soda drinks bottled water almost exlusively. No, really. We bought a case of 35 bottles, and with all the medication they have me on, I'm so fucking dehydrated.
Anyway, I go in this morning, switch out my top for an uncomfortable tie-in-the-back mint green monstrosity. Which, I just have to say, if the patient seems to wear an extra small, don't hand her a large. I probably flashed half the hospital through the sleeve of that thing, and there was major nipple-showage. Anyway...
I waited for a half hour before they finally let me in. Now, this is where the fun begins. No food, no liquid in me. They back me up against this table thing, so that I'm standing with my back along it, and they hand me this cup of fizzy liquid. I drink it down (tastes like rock candy, my ass), choke and make icky faces, and then inform her that I really have to burp. She tells me not to, because they just created a bunch of gas in my stomach. Yeah...
The actual doctor came in and they handed me the nastiest shit ever known to man to choke down. Seriously, this was like street chalk half dissolved in water. They made me take two sips, started taking pictures of my throat, and then told me to drink the rest of it down, so they could take pictures of my stomach with this shit going through it.
Needless to say, I started to get dizzy and I thought I was going to pass out. Thankfully, they had me leaning against that cool table that can be turned into a bed (I honestly didn't even notice it when they did it, because I was half blacked out at that point), and they had me laying down and drinking the rest of the crap with a straw. Even cooler? I could see the inside of my stomach when they were taking the pictures (some stuff in there looks really weird). They let me keep in my navel piercing, which I thought was odd, and the person doing the x-ray at first thought that I had had gallblader surgery. Heh.
I asked when they were taking the pictures, and my doctor confirmed afterwards that they would have called him almost immediately if there was an ulcer or something else that looked odd. They out and out told me while they did it that it didn't look like anything was wrong. Grr.
I went to the doctor afterwards, and this is what pisses me off: he didn't get the results when he said that he would, but whatever. He did, however, make changes to my medication. I had been taking 40mg of Pantaloc and 40mg of Nexium a day (both stomach acid-reducing meds). I told him out and out that they weren't working. So he decided to cut me down to only one a day? Huh? He also told me to stop taking the T3s, which is like...the only thing that touches the pain, other than taking twice the recommended dose of regular Tylenol. I was told to keep taking the buscopan as needed (the anti-spasmodic). I'm going back to work on Thursday, because I've been out since my second clinic visit over a week ago. But he did tell me that if I find it hard to work on Friday because of the pain, the same pain that I was still complaining about at this visit, well, I can go down to the clinic and get another note to get out of work for another week.
So, he cuts my meds in half, tells me to stop the only painkiller that even takes away the slightest bit of pain, and tells me that everything's going to be fine. Um...who's the one that feels like they're getting stabbed with knives in the stomach and back every five minutes? For fuck's sake, I can barely walk or stay on my feet for more than ten minutes, and now I have no excuse to not go back to my eight hour shifts.
Of course, if things aren't better in a week, the only other thing that they can do is a 'scope down the throat and into the stomach to see if they can see anything there. My mother's freaking out because I'm having the same complaints, and being put on the same medications as my father was when he first started to get sick all those years ago, and of course, they never did figure out what that was before he died.
On the good side of things, I got a raise. I was being paid 8.75 an hour, since I'm still considered a junior cashier at Extra, despite the fact that I work in the cash office exclusively and I'm the only front end employee that works forty hours a week. We've been working without a contract, and keeping an eye on what's happening at Save-On, with their threatened strike and all. Suddenly, I get a call yesterday saying that base rate pay for front end? 10.00 an hour now. Yay! Now if only I can keep my forty hours a week and actually go to work, that Vegas trip is gonna be awesome!