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06/13/2006: "Health"

The ERCP experience (feel free to use that for your next band name) was much better than I expected. A lot of what I read about it didn't apply because, at least at this hospital, they really do sedate you. I wasn't just sleepy or groggy. I was out. At least far enough out that I didn't wake up when they put the tube down my throat. Or even have any awareness of it. (Unless they also threw in some of those amnesia drugs. But no one ever said anything about that. Or maybe I just ... forgot about it!) I don't even remember any sense of drifting off. I was there in the room with the doctor, the anesthesiologist, and a couple of nurses, then the next thing I knew I was in the recovery room, like an hour later. The worst of it actually came a few hours later at home, when I started having these upper abdominal pains -- ack, that's what they warned me about, the thing that happens in 5% of patients requiring a few days in the hospital to let things settle down. Again I went back to the age-old question: how bad does it have to be before you call someone. It woke me up a couple times during the night, but I toughed it out and everything seems fine today. And the doctor found no evidence of Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis -- so I've got that going for me. (On the other hand, that means they still haven't found anything wrong. But what can you do.)