My intestines stopped working again. I cannot even begin to explain how un-cool this is, or how much I have underestimated the power they lord over me. But let me back up and start at the beginning:
Last weekend was kicked off by the rather stressful event of being informed that they had accidentally given away my new dorm room and as a result I would be forced to move, yet again, back the same building I started in. Dario, a French friend of mine came to argue my case with the Director of the dorms but to no avail. I did, however, get Internet finally out of the deal in my new, yet smaller and rather claustrophobic new room. So Friday morning all my belongings went back into bags where I left them as I ran down town to catch my train north for a weekend of Beer and Sausage at Munich's infamous Oktoberfest. It was somewhere between here and Strasbourg that I realized something had gone terribly wrong in my ventral region but there wasn't a whole lot to be done. Two bus rides, a half a bottle of German laxatives, more than several German Sausage washed down with German beer and delicious espresso, an ox steak, roast chicken, fresh pretzels with amazing spicy mustard, several anal oil suppositories, a zippy tour around Strasbourg in the early morning, and a bag of prunes later, I was headed home and very sick. By Tuesday night I was freaked and the appearance of blood in place of what should have been digested German sausage sent me to the hospital on the back of Dario's Vespa. (A rather sweet way to roll up to the ER in retrospect.)
I was pretty sure that my hypochondriacal nature was in full swing and I would be easily discharged by morning. Wrong. They started with x-rays of my stomach, which showed an impressive amount of "stuff" in my intestines I was informed. Well duh, I could have told them that. I then had the pleasure of having the biggest (at least a gallon and green) enema I've ever seen. The doctors called it: "Le Big". I swear to God I'm not making that up. Farther x-rays showed inflammation and treated me to an MRI in the morning, which revealed more extensive inflammation of my colon as well as air in my portal vein (departing my liver). I was promptly packed up and shipped off to l'Hôpital Saint-Éloi where the specialty is Internal Medicine. I enjoyed several days of veggie broth and boredom, though accompanied by some marvelous and attentive friends while we waited for the air in my portal vein to dissipate (it did) and for the inflammation to go down. An ultrasound on Friday showed that if anything the inflammation had gotten worse however. I was scheduled for a endoscopy the following Monday to have a little look see inside and they started pumping antibiotics and antiparasitics into my IV to cover all the bases. These are two unlikely but possible explanations for my total digestive shutdown. Unfortunately, the most likely explanation is an Inflammatory Bowel Disease called Ulcerative Colitis, which creates ulcers in the colon and lower GI tract. Sexy, huh? The endoscopy on Monday showed little, but I have an appointment on Monday to discuss the results from the numerous biopsies they extracted from my poor intestinal walls during the endoscocpy. I got to watch this by the way, fully awake, on a TV monitor. Interesting I suppose, but a little disconcerting to see little pincers reach out and grab your insides and slowly pull a bloody chunk away and all the while you can feel it tuggin on the inside. I've also been scheduled for a full Colonoscopy during the first week of November when I get to make another hungry three-day visit back to my favorite French hospital.
On the bright side, I got a visit from Mom. She showed up on Saturday after a hectic two-day journey through airports and bad weather, but it's been wonderful to have her here. She has been pampering me and even let me have one Peanut M&M for each of the remaining days I was in the hospital despite my heavily altered diet (think veggie broth and plain white rice on day number 5). I am disappointed that her visit to France ended up mostly in a hospital room, but it was worth it to have someone here with me. Since I got released yesterday, I took her on a quick tour of the old part of town this morning and we visited a little market, albeit my least favorite. She's been cooking, cleaning, and rubbing my back when I get upset or nauseous. It would be nice to keep her all year.
Interestingly enough the more I think about it, the more it all makes sense. Anemia, random vomiting several years ago, stomach cramps and fatigue, multiple episodes of supposed food poisoning, multiple trips to Student Health and the hospital, stool samples with nothing to be found, my intestinal debacle after Africa; they all fit into this disorder and it would explain quite a bit. Still: Lame. It seems funny that after all these years of misdiagnosis, i.e. Anemia due to diet, over production of stomach acid, food poisoning, paralytic ileus, ect. that it would be France to figure it out, but I guess at least someone did. Maybe there is a method to the madness of France's incredibly slow nature and tendency to take five times as long to do anything; they don't blow over things. For better or worse I plan to stick it out with France if possible, but sadly I feel there is going to be a great reduction in my consumption of classic French staples, think cheese and wine. The hope is now that with some diet adjustments when needed, this condition can be kept in remission most of the time and bad flare-ups like this one can be headed off with medication and farther diet changes until things return to normal.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment