Thursday, November 29, 2007

egd v2.0, diagnosis still pending

I had one of these in 2004, but I didn't remember that. I had to search the blog here to find the date when I was filling in my paperwork.

2004 was a bit of a rough year, so it doesn't surprise me that I couldn't remember it. I did remember that it was completely normal, though.

Today was a day mostly spent sleeping, which was kind of nice. The procedure itself is gone, permanently lost in the mists of Versed. (I love Versed.)

I had this test because I'm having a lot of trouble swallowing and my throat is sore all the time. Results of the test, so far:

1. Normal esophagus.
2. Gastric mucosal abnormality chracterized by erythema.
3. Normal examined duodenum.

What that means:
1. There's nothing wrong with my throat, which is a relief, but doesn't explain why it hurts all the time.

2. The inside of my tummy is red. Being compulsive, I looked up the ICD Code (537.89), and found: gastric or duodenal prolapse or rupture (nope); intestinal metaplasia of gastric mucosa (yep); passive congestion of the stomach (nope). Again with the compulsive thing, I looked up intestinal metaplasia, and found that "intestinal" means having to do with the intestines (duh), and "metaplasia" means "a change of cells to a form that does not normally occur in the tissue in which it is found." The big deal with intestinal metaplasia is that it is a risk factor for gastric cancer. (rolls eyes)

3. My duodenum's fine, too.

Biopsies were taken of the esophagus and the "gastric mucosa", and results of those biopsies are of course still pending.

About 3:30 this afternoon, the phone rang, it was the imaging center to schedule an esophgram/ugi/small bowel flouroscopy-barium swallow ordeal test, ordered by this same doctor. That one won't be until the end of December, so I won't have any kind of answer on all this until next year.

Of course if it's serious, they'll get back to me a lot sooner than that.

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