D-Day

EGD day. I am so incredibly nervous. As awful as it sounds, I want Dr. Frech to so badly find something wrong but have become very skeptical at this point. I check into the hospital in the late afternoon and have been fasting for 12 hours. At least for this test I don’t have to drink any nasty liquids. It is very quiet and I am Dr. Frech’s only patient for the day. The usual preparations happen. When I am ready, they wheel me into the procedure room and it is dark. I am hooked up to the monitors and oxygen is put on. I feel like my heart is going to beat right out of my chest.

Dr. Frech comes over and sits down next to me. I immediately apologize for my meltdown in his office and ask him to please not give up on me. He promises to not give up on me as long as I stick with him and don’t give up on him. He goes over the procedure and what he will do. We both seem nervous. He looks at me and says he hopes he finds something because he will be at a loss if nothing is found. I have very little reassurance from our conversation. 

Once again, I am in the process of being knocked out. This time, I watch the clock in the room to see how long I can stay awake. About 45 seconds and the last thing I remember is Dr. Frech standing next to me waiting for me to fall asleep.

I wake up in recovery and the first thing I ask my parents is how long I was gone. 25 minutes. I instantly know that he found something. A few minutes later, Dr. Frech comes in and confirms what I thought. He shows me the pictures of my stomach and then proceeds to tell me that I have one very angry stomach. My esophagus is normal but I have a hiatal hernia. I also have polyps in my stomach. He then proceeds to tell me that I have a condition that is called bile reflux gastropathy/gastritis. I have bile that is pooled in the bottom of my stomach, just sitting there, causing inflammation in my stomach.  He thinks that this could be related to having my gallbladder removed. When the liver releases bile, it is stored in the gallbladder. When the gallbladder is removed, the liver still releases bile and the bile in a normal person flows downward into the intestines. In my case, I produce too much bile and it flowed downward into the intestines but also flowed upwards and back into my stomach. This also caused a dysfunction of the pyloric sphincter which controls what is allowed back in and out of your stomach. Dr. Frech tells me that we have a couple options but are limited. The only way to truly correct the problem is to have surgery. This procedure is called a Roux-en-y or better known as gastric bypass. For now, we will try medication and hopefully this controls the symptoms enough so that the surgery would not be necessary. He puts me on a medication called Ursodiol.

Finally…vindication! A diagnosis has been made. Little did I know that there was not a lot of information out there on my condition, let alone what I could to fix it or if surgery would even work.