Endoscopy

So, I have stomach problems. My stomach is rarely happy. I call it Lyme damage or at least damage from the stress of Lyme. So, I scheduled an upper endoscopy with my new GI. This was before I started feeling REALLY awful, though. Finally, the day came and I was SCARED! I did not know for the life of me how the heck my nervous system was going to respond to the stress of the procedure, the anesthesia, the recovery, the soreness, etc. It was scary to go into the surgery part of the hospital, even though I wasn't having surgery. Now, I've had a couple minor surgical procedures before, plus an emergency C-Section and I did fairly well. However, that was all back when my body was normal. When I responded to things normally.

So, I got in my hospital bed in my hospital gown and the nurse came in and checked my vitals, hooked me up to my IV (which was a chore 'cause my veins hate everybody), and explained what was gonna happen. I was just sitting there in denial thinking about NOT signing the consent form. My mom was there with me which I was glad about 'cause she's a nurse and has been by my side through all the horrendous health issues I've had.

So, the orderly came to get me and wheeled me away to the procedure room which looked equipped to remove every organ in my body! I'm glad I wasn't wearing contacts. Something about the blurriness of the room helped a little. My sweet, wonderful GI doc was so personable with me and has a confident, capable, trustworthy, experienced, wise aura about him. I generally do not get this impression from doctors, but I did from him. So, they put a horrible device in my mouth, hooked me up to monitor my vitals, put oxygen tubes in my nose which, to my recollection, I have never had, and put the sedating stuff in my IV which HURT!!!!!!!! It hurt so bad it upset me so much. My heart was already racing and I was shaking and sweating 'cause I was so scared........

And then I woke up in the recovery room from the best nap I've ever had LOL. I was so well rested, so comfortable, so at peace, so refreshed, and so out of it haha. It was a pleasant kind of "out of it", though. I was in a good mood, and, despite coming out of sedation, was apparently asking intelligent questions. The doc said he would just tell my mom 'cause it would go in one ear and out the other with me. He told everything to her and then left. So I guess the IV stuff calmed my nervous system instead of freaking it out.

When I came to a little more, I got a print out of the images from the scope. I would post a picture here but quite frankly it is graphic and I don't want to gross anybody out.

So, I will skip inserting the picture right here.

So the findings of this upper GI endoscopy are:

A one inch Hiatal Hernia (stomach protruding up my lower esophagus)
Gastritis in the lower part of my stomach (inflammation of stomach lining)
Esophagitis in lower part of esophagus (silent reflux maybe?)

Upper esophagus and intestine normal.

I pretty much diagnosed myself with all of this before getting the scope but it's nice to have validation.

I think I wanna go the natural route to heal this mess, but we'll see.

IT'S NEVER JUST LYME!