On Tuesday, I was at the hospital  from 9:30 am all the way till about 5:00pm to get a couple of  tests done – MRI Enterography and Neck Ultrasound. I was given 45 minutes to down 3 bottles of 450ml each of barium sulphate, a slippery, kind of oily, thick but sort of translucent, dull white liquid. I thought I was doing pretty fine until after about 1.5 bottles, after which, each sip only got harder to swallow. I managed alright, I think. I’ve had worse tasting medicines before. It did seem like I was high on barium sulphate for sometime though.

The standard procedure for MRI Enterography involves also having a contrast liquid running in your system. It highlights abnormalities and inflammation much clearly and hence is highly recommended. This time round too, like once back in the past, my experience with having a contrast running in me wasn’t exactly pleasant. They struggled to find my veins, thought my veins were too thin, and practically fought to properly insert the needle. After about three failed attempts on my left hand, they tried the same on my right and finally managed to get the contrast going.

If I were to sum up my experience at the Radiology Department yesterday, I would say it was a total adventure, with prolonged waiting time and misleading information from every person we spoke to. They first got the timing all mixed up and expected us to reach earleir. Then a person told me I might get a diarrhoea after barium sulphate, another said nope, not at all. Another person said constrast was required and someone else said it depends on us. And, my reports, which were supposed to be ready within an hour took almost two hours to be ready instead. Total mess.

After a point, everything got really annoying and I couldn’t wait to get home. Exhaustion and pain simply got worse over the 7.5 hours of being out. I had to collect my daily medicines from another hospital nearby too. Thankfully, dad was around with me through the day.

So, it turns out that my MRI Enterography was normal, no abnormalities in my major organs – so that’s something to celebrate! However, the key question remains – if everything is normal, why am I experiencing all these abnormal sysmtoms?

Usual answer – we don’t know yet and we must take it one step at a time. I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t get frustrating; you kind of want to know what it is but you also don’t want it to be too serious. It’s then when you realise that you don’t have much of a control, so, you take it one step at a time. One day at a time. One test/scan at a time.

To be continued…