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Friday, May 13, 2011

Endoscopy or Not

Okay, so I logged on this afternoon only to find that the two posts I made yesterday are gone. What the heck! Where could they have gone?

I know I couldn't have imagined making the post, after all I had a couple comments on one of them.

Have any of you had this happen to you?


Anyway, I just read through all the information on Mayo's site about ulcers. It sounds like ulcers can be caused by a bacteria or by pain medication. I think it is pretty clear that the very large amount of Ibuprofen, Ketoprofen and Imitrex that I've taken over the years is the obvious culprit. Mayo outlined 3 paths to diagnosis. First, the bacteria can be detected in a breath or blood test. Second, ulcers can be seen in an x-ray with barium swallow. Third, an upper endoscopy can be done. If that is done, and an ulcer is found they can take a biopsy and test if for the bacteria.

Based on this information I have to believe the xray is the best option for me. I'm not worried about a bacteria and even if it is the bacteria we can figure that out easier and cheaper by doing a breath or blood test. I would rather do those things than the endoscopy, which will require an excessive amount of fasting, anesthesia, and will require me to fight crazy DC traffic afterwards. I don't want to put my body through that unnecessarily. Aren't I going through enough already?

I'm calling my doc now to request the change.

8 comments:

  1. Hi there. My post from yesterday is also gone, but blogger has this message up right now under "known issues":

    To get Blogger back to normal, all posts since 7:37am PDT on Weds, 5/11 have been temporarily removed. Blogger is in read-only mode for now. We expect everything to be back to normal soon.
    — LATEST UPDATE ON FRIDAY, MAY 13, 2011

    I hope all of ours post return ASAP! Let me know how it turns out (my e-mail address is mklaub@gmail.com)

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  2. Yes, my last post is gone too. I was pretty upset because I know I wrote it and posted it. Glad it is back on track though. Good luck with the xray!

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  3. Truthfully...endoscopy is the most accurate. You may get the ultrasound and still need the endo. I'd go straight for the big guns.

    I had one last year. It's a piece of cake. You don't get fully put under or intubated (obviously). It's quick...and I ate a bagel in the recovery room!

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  4. Blogger's having issues. To commiserate, it erased a post I made with pictures and captions and italics and everything. I'm trying to reconstruct it with a copy blogger auto-emailed me upon publishing, but still, html and formatting whine.

    Good luck with the ulcer testing!

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  5. Good luck with those hard decisions!

    Blogger was down for hours last evening (Australian time) I don't know what happened but I bet that's why your posts disappeared :(

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  6. Hell yes you've gone through enough! The DC traffic is worse than the endoscopy, though. You won't even know they have been down your throat, except for maybe a mild sore throat afterwards. The bacteria the doc is talking about is called helicobacter pylori. My brother had it. He also had a bad ulcer from it. My granddaughter had this, too. Antibiotics and prilosec usually does the trick!

    Now, about everyone losing posts yesterday. Blogger misplaced them! They of course retrieved them, but comments are still missing. The same thing happened to me. It was 24 hours of straight blogger nightmare and hell.

    Take care, and big hugs honey.

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  7. Della, I think you're right about the traffic being worse:)

    Jessica, that's interesting. I would hate to prolong answers and have two tests because one isn't very effective. I'm resolved to go ahead with the test if I don't hear from my doc, and if I do I'll see what she says and go from there.

    Thanks ladies! My posts did return though not all the comments...oh well.

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  8. Endoscopy sounds scary but it's actually not, though, I was sedated when it happened. Thanks to endoscopy, I saved serious cash because my doctor was able to pinpoint the exact med to treat my condition.

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