This was a post I wasn’t going to write, I had no intention to put my fingers to the keyboard and spell out the continuation of my throat saga. If you remember my poem The Silence that was the start of my throat problems and I had hoped it would all be done and dusted by now.
But no, a couple of months ago I sat here writing looking like this:
I had to go and have an 24hr PH test. The tube goes down my throat and sits down in my oesophagus. For 24hrs this had to stay there doing it’s thing and measures the amount of acid that wells up (refluxes) from your stomach into your oesophagus, and helps to find out if your symptoms are caused by acid reflux which is the flow of the stomach contents back into the oesophagus. It sounds strange and it is but the effect on my throat so far has been so painful and sore that I had become desperate to find out the cause. The tube, as you can see on the picture runs out of the nose and is taped to the side of my face and leads down to a contraption which records all of the data.
What you can’t see is that when I opened my mouth you can see the white coated tube running down the back of my throat, it’s bizarre! That’s why I had to entitle this post; Things that make you go eerrgh! There’s nothing I like less than seeing other peoples medical bits and bobs.
Probably one of the biggest fears I had to conquer was actually having the tube threaded up my nose and down my throat. It just goes against every natural instinct in my body. Suffice to say I gagged, put up my hand like the nice doctor said I could if it got too much and we all stood there not moving until I had the balls to motion to carry on. It’s horrendous and I couldn’t really get over that fact. I’m a whimp and it was clear to see.
via GIPHY
After some dramatics and copious amounts of tears coming out of my eyes due to the effect of gagging and the feeling on my nose, it was finally down and sitting in the right place inside of me.
Here you can see that there’s quite a long piece of tube needed to go down and dangle there catching the data. It stops just before the sphincter. When I ate I had to push the relevant buttons on my little hip pack to show that I was eating or drinking. This would be transferred to the printout when it came the following day so that it reflected the correct results. The same for if I laid down to sleep. If I had any of the symptoms then I could record that too. Acid feelings and those sorts of things would show up by way of an electro mark and all add to what they could find out. The doctor could see that I was not at all comfortable with it being there and although it should be in for 24hrs I asked what the minimum was. Reluctantly he said to try to get past 4hrs. It was like that statement sparked off a mental countdown timer in my head that I didn’t even know I had.
By the time it got to the early hours of the morning I was so freaked by the feeling of it going down the back of my throat that I took it out myself. Really strange feeling. I took a deep breath and gently peeled off the cotton sticky plasters holding the tube in place around my nose. Then, really really carefully and nice and slow, I started to pull the tube out of my nose. Mind over matter had to come into play once again. Finally after a few seconds which felt a hell of a lot longer, the ends of the tubes came out of my nose. What a feeling that was, I gave a little whoop of joy and was immensely relieved that it had come out so smoothly and was over and done with.
I had the best couple of hours sleep ever after that! So pleased that it was behind me. It seems like a natural end to this particular post. I’ll do another update soon and let you know how it’s all going. Thank goodness it’s done for the time being though.
Have you ever had to have one of these procedures or anything similar, come on, let’s share some stories!