I had a scheduled CAT Scan this morning. Why? Sometime in April I started feeling more and more pain again.. ended up in the hospital for a couple days. Long story short, last week (late July) I went to the dr insisted that things were going poorly and I needed to do something.. pain.. wow.. Apparently, my pain tolerance is pretty high (according to the GI Specialist at the hospital).
My temporary GI Specialist (another story in and of itself) told me to up my prednisone (I’d just dropped 10mg one week, another 10mg another week and then went up 10mg before going in to actually see the dr).. but I knew this was more than just need prednisone. He gave me rx for flagyl and cipro, upped the prednisoe and scheduled a CT scan…..
So this morning, after 4:30, I couldn’t eat or drink anything.. 90 minutes before my appointment I had to drink 1/2 a bottle of Creamy Vanilla Smoothie flavored Barium Sulfate Suspension (not a laxative).. 30 minutes later, 1/2 of what was left and again, 30 minutes later the last of it. It wasn’t terrible… actually better than the flat orange drink I had at the hospital and it didn’t seem to be quite as much either.
When I got to the appointment, they had me drink another cup of it… ok.. I’d had enough by then.. I guess it worked out to be about 22 ounces or so maybe.
The CT scan is an easy one – non-invasive, painless… it takes pictures of your insides and the barium helps highlight what the doctors need to see. Over a period of about 10 minutes or so, the table I was laying on slid back and forth inside the machine and would tell me to take a breath, hold it, and when to breath, while it took pictures (or scanned). Simple stuff. My order also contained a contrast, so the woman doing the scan also gave me a shot and injected dye into my bloodstream and another round of images where taken.
Here’s some information about CAT scans from RadiologyInfo – in the picture, the woman is laying with her head close to the machine.. for my test, my feet went in first and it just focused on my upper and lower abdomen.
I’m not sure exactly what this test will tell the doctors, other than it will show if I have any absesses or even inflammation. My next appointment is early August… I’m seeing a new doctor, at the same practice (wish me luck I like her, please – she’s specializes in Colitis and Crohn’s and just moved to their practice from the Mayo Clinic). I’ll see then what we’re going to do since I’ve had so many issues the past few months.
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