Intolerance....The Gastro-Intestinal Story

Soooo... I have discovered that I am intolerant.  I have been having for lack of a more artful term, intestinal issues for the last 5 years.  I blamed the onset of these to a law firm I worked for that was very stressful.  Then I blamed it on the next law firm I worked at that was very stressful.  They were both defense firms.  They are stressful dysfunctional places but...perhaps it was not their fault.  After colonoscopy and endoscopy they diagnosed me with ulcerative colitis.  This is only a slightly more definitive diagnosis than “irritable bowel syndrome”.  After the colonoscopy I was told that there was “minor irritation” in my intestine.

Everyone has advice about this.  Eat this yogurt. Drink this shake.  Eat fiber.  Avoid fiber.  More fruit.  Fruit will kill you.  And all along my doctors telling me that my diet has nothing to do with my stomach problems.  They put me on medication that costs several hundred dollars a month.  4 pills a day.  Along with 6 Juice Plus, Iron and Folic Acid I was taking 10 minutes to gag down a handful of pills every morning.  And I did not get better.  Prior to leaving the other guy I had a pill cam which i got to swallow and they got to watch go through my stomach.  I also had an upper and lower GI and I still don't know what that means.  All of them came back with the Doctor telling me I had “minor irritation”.

I got frustrated and changed doctors.  The new doctor said “I need my own tests” and we did another endoscopy and colonoscopy.  Surprisingly the doctor got the results and told me that they showed I had minor irritation in my lower intestine but now I was prepared.  I had an iPhone and had taken a picture of my “normal” stool and said “Does that look like minor irritation?  It doesn't FEEL like minor irritation”.  He was...troubled.  I was angry.  I explained to him that I needed to fire him because I was not getting better and he was no quarterbacking my treatment but was just doing procedures that were not changing anyone’s thought process.  I suggested that every time I came back from the doc my wife (who is really tired of my shit...literally)and she has all kinds of questions.  Have they tested you for Crones? Have they tested you for ciliac?  Have they tested you for lactose intolerance? have they tested you for syphillis?  LOTS of questions.  And I come back from the doc with no answers.  So we embarked on a series of tests to rule things out.

Oh... somewhere along the line I also got swollen lymph nodes in my stomach meaning I get to have CT scans every 3-4 months to see if they grow.  My internist suggested that it was natural after 5 years of inflammation that I would of course had inflammation.  My gastro-enterologist of course expressed to me that I should be much more concerned about that without being able to advise me on any other course of action I should take other than “monitoring them”.

So now I go in and get three hydrogen breath tests.  One for bacterial overgrowth, one for fructose intolerance and one for lactose intolerance.  Bacterial overgrowth means you have too much bacteria in your small intestine.  Evidently this is bad.  For these tests you eat a little bland food the day before the test and then fast for twelve hours.  I always go in as early as possible but it is a pain and an inconvenience getting ready for these tests and it is more than anything else annoying and time consuming.  You come in and the take you back and you blow into something and they take a baseline reading and then you drink something.  Then they send you back out and you come back every half hour and they take another reading.  For the bacterial over growth test I was there for three hours, blew 6 times and came up with....nothing.  For the fructose test it was the same drill but you drink a super corn syrup fructose powder mixed with water.  I blew the first time and had nothing and blew the second time and was told “we are done, you are highly fructose intolerant and you are going to have a very bad day”.  Fortunately with the nature of my problem it was not even that bad of a day.  I was happy to finally have a diagnosis, that was something I could conceivably figure out how to deal with.  I had the lactose test next week and came back again but I have eaten cheese and butter all my life and I was pretty certain this was not an issue.  

I came in like the other tests.  Took my baseline reading and blew.  I cam back a ½ hour later and blew a .02... then I cam back a half hour later and blew an .06.  Evidently it takes the stomach a while to start processing and creating the chemical reactions and gasses.  I was feeling a lot of things going on in my tummy.  I then came back and blew a .56 and she said “WHOA.  We are done and you know what I said last week about you feeling bad...you are going to feel REAL bad today”.  And you know what, she was right.  I guess when your intolerant it is almost like a full body allergic reaction.  Wow.  She advised that I go home but of course I missed a mornings work and really needed to catch up so I went into work and I sweated, and I ached and I evacuated the poison from my system for about four hours.

Si I am lactose and fructose intolerant.  What do I do?  Well, I don’t know.  Information is all over the board.  Everyone thinks you can just cut things out but both of them are in a lot of things so I have suddenly become a label reader.  I have never read ingredients on anything in my life.  Over the last couple of weeks I have tried to do this on my own and consulted numerous sources on the Internet and am ore confused than ever.  The process of intentional avoidance has offered some immediate benefits regarding general gassiness but my inflammation (diarrhea) is still sporadic.  As a person who formerly enjoyed sitting on the toilet for 20 minutes and getting some reading done, the last few years of 45 second shits has been very odd so transitioning back could be odd as well. One thing I am is very pissed off at a system that misdiagnosed and mis-treated me for 5 years. It is a portrait of our current health care system where docs get paid to perform procedures rather than try and treat the patient and the illness. I do not think they do this because they are stupid or because they with us poorly, I think it is just "the system". It sucks and it makes me think that tearing it down might be the only way to save it.

As I said the information on the Internet is all over the place beer is good, beer is bad, blackberries are good, blackberries are bad.  high fructose corn syrup is definitely the enemy but how this is listed as an ingredient is all over the map.  Almost any lays product has lactose powder in it. Cranberry juice cocktail is bad, or it is OK.  regular cane sugar is fine, or it is poison.  It all appears to be highly specialized to individuals and what their tolerances are.  I am keeping a diary of everything that I eat and what my symptoms are and that seems like a very self involved thing but the internet is universal in telling me that this is a requirement of my...."conditions". So I will see an a dietitian and talk with my doctor next week and try and figure out what this really means.  What it seems to mean is that my intolerance is going to make my life a like more bland.  When I think about what i see politically from our countries intolerance, that sounds about right.

The Colonoscopy (Why is God Angry With Me?)

Today's selection is at the suggestion of my personal life coach and Sherpa Tim Tiemann. I am not going to even begin the long winded story of WHY I am to get the second colonoscopy in two years. I am not even going to particularly dwell on being in hour 24 of a fasting process as demanded by the Nazi doctors of Barnes-Jewish Hospital (I know there is somewhat of a disconnect between Barnes-Jewish and Nazi but you will have to allow me a little artistic license here). What i want to talk about is the preparation process so that your colon and the related piping are clean enough for the doctor to... do his thing the next day.

1st they send you a box. Seriously, it is a box with a plastic jug and 4 flavor packets with a bunch of stuff in the bottom of it. They also send with two tablets. At noon you take the two tablets and fill the jug with tap water and a flavor packet. You then refrigerate it for 6 hours. Not five. Not four, not seven. SIX HOURS. I took the tablets at 1:30 and went home and mixed everything up and...went back to work. After a good afternoon at work, then night court for my own tickets, then home to eat some broth...it is now time.

They tell you to drink 8 ounces every ten minutes and it is now six minutes after the first glass. I chose lemon-lime flavoring over cherry or orange or strawberry. I am now watching "Super Bad" . The stuff tastes chalky and they advise to drink each glass quickly rather then slowly so I chugged the whole thing. 7 minutes later and I feel pressure... pressure. Watching the cops and Mc Lubben shooting guns is taking my mind off of it and to be fair, the pressure is subtle as I count down to the next, chilled glass of chalky, lemony, limey stuff.

Boom. Second glass down. I think i might be consuming slightly more then eight ounces for each glass. Chugging the second glass and already feeling bloated brings on feeling of introspection. What in my life has brought me here? With modern science is their really not a better way to prepare yourself for this. My first one 15 years ago I only had to drink like three glasses of the stuff and I could mix it with 7-Up and it just WAS NOT THIS BAD! I have some memories from the last one that I did not, could not even finish my jug. Feelings that further exacerbated my general feeling of being a guinea pig in a bad high school science experiment (Here dad...drink this. Why? I want to see what happens to you. Ok). I guess i would do that for my kids. The pressure does not seem much worse then after the first glass but in a few minutes i will hit the third one and will have at least 24 ounces sloshing in my belly.

Third one...done. Gagged a little (but just a little). Now I am feeling like one of those poor biafran children who you see with flies swarming around their rheumy eyes with the distended bellies. Still not a lot of pressure but just pure discomfort at having so much liquid dumped directly down my gullet. It looks like I am about half done which means I have been breaking the rules because I should only be about 3/8th done. At this point I am feeling a little bit of anger. Normally when you have a taste this foul in your mouth you are entitled to get yourself a cracker or something else to eat to take the foul, wretched taste out of your mouth. But not now! No, I am fasting. Oops....first major involuntary cramp. I must say....it hurts. I am a pussy.

The fourth glass. I really cannot believe that anyone who cared at all about people would force another person to drink this stuff. By all that is holy.... Becoming too bloated to even type. I have seen how this movie ends. One word... poorly. I am taking the current book I am reading... "The Girl Who Played With Fire" and setting it by the toilet... so I do not have to remember. Things appear to be moving under my skin as in a bad science fiction movie and my stomach is making.... sounds. Lets call them unhappy sounds.

Not to digress but the purpose of this is of course.... to have a clear stool. I have not yet made the trip but it is my profound hope that I will live long enough to make the report. Though I am sorely tempted to photograph it.... especially for Tiemann, I feel that even for me, that might violate some essential code of decency that I have not breached...yet. Give me time. They don't really tell you when you are supposed to poop. it is like a special secret that they cannot share. I mean think about this, 8 glasses, one every ten minutes...just 80 minutes of your life. Are you supposed to make it the whole time...can I make it through 80 minutes?

Vegas odds say 23-1 to one against. Seriously, check it. They are posting it and people all over the country are betting on my colon. Seriously, I picture like 60,000 people with 'Vuvuzelas' are making that awful, bees buzzing, geese getting brutally murdered sound in support...of my kidneys...and my colon. OH GOD! That was the fifth. There really is nothing but discomfort now. Still pressing on and not feeling a huge need to go....just feeling soooo bad. Gagged down glass number five and spilled a little down the front of my shirt and was happy just to spill some. Spilling is good. I wish I could spill more. I am reasonably convinced that when I go to pee... everything else will...happen. I need to pee. Crossding my legs.

Number six was kind of a disaster. beginning to consider why I do not have a more active prayer life and thinking that will change immediately. Stomach spasming. The sixth one was a problem because the moment the file crap hit the back of my throat I started to retch and lost the whole mouthful. The best part is you shake it off, breathe, and then chug some more. Awesome. Hungry and bloated and wanting to evacuate whatever is in my bodt through any (and every) orifice. AND YET... and yet what I would not give for even a small bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos just to take this taste out of my mouth.

I am feeling like I am drunk, but unfortunately I am not drunk. I am just miserable and delusional. Two more glasses to choke down but I do NOT think daddy makes it. Watching them puke on Super Bad (perhaps this was a poor choice) is doing nothing to improve my situation. OK...the champ went seven rounds but that was all he could do. The first trip to the bathroom was neither as spectacular or relieving as one might hope. I have four minutes before I go back and choke down the last glass. The glasses definitely got smaller after one and two and it will take eight miserable trips to get this filthy, filthy act done.

Yes, that just happened. I will report on this no more. We will never speak of it again. Understood?