I've been away for a while, but I'm back in Berlin now. I was greeted by frightful fits of sneezing upon entering my apartment. Well, not quite upon entering. The sneezing started seven minutes after entering. I've already soaked through four sheets of paper towels. My nose is spewing snot like a firehose. Spring has sprung, it seems. This wasn't the case in Poland for the last two weeks. There, I had no signs or symptoms of allergies. Poland offered me other gifts, of the birthday kind. In the aftermath of Easter, the anniversary of Jesus' zombification, my stomach was reeling. It is tradition in Poland to eat as many eggs as humanly possible over this holiday. Breakfast begins with hardboiled eggs, deviled eggs, egg salad, and soup with eggs. You get the idea. Before lunch time I had ingested a month's worth of cholesterol. Predictably, and because my stomach was already on precarious footing after the colonoscopy, my digestive system did not condone this Christian celebration. So, to gain some insights into my predicament, I saw a doctor. Three doctors, to be exact. The first prescribed me antibiotics without confirming I had an actual infection. This prompted me to seek a second opinion. The second doctor, having performed additional diagnostics (at additional costs) confirmed that my internal organs seemed normal via an ultrasound. He recommended I test my stool for H. pylori, and he suggested the cause of my discomfort was not an infection, but rather acid. So, I marched my way to the pharmacy and got a stool test and some proton pump inhibitors. The stool test came back negative but my stomach pain wasn't being mitigated by the PPIs. This is where the third doctor comes in. An appointment was made to visit the practice on my birthday - not by choice, but because this was the only appointment available for a gastroscopy. Because I am covered by German health insurance, and with Poland being a different country, I would have to pay for this visit out of pocket. But this was not a problem.
The problem was the procedure would happen without sedation.
That's right. A long, snaking tube with a camera would be inserted down my esophagus and coil itself into my stomach. A birthday gift from me to me. It took some mental preparation, of course. There was the requisite nightmare leading up to the event, but this wasn't as barbaric or awful as the actual procedure. Words do little to relay the experience. Until it happens to you, it is something you can only imagine and, when you imagine it, you, not having felt these sensations before, have little to compare it to. Choking on a long object while your mouth is held open by a sort of ballgag is something that probably many of my readers have insights into, so I won't elaborate much on this except to say that trying to breath while you're wrenching and heaving and convulsing feels something akin to drowning. The body is a state of biological terror and turmoil: to say it is alarmed is an understatement. As it tries futilely to dislodge the endoscope, you must whisper sweet nothings to yourself while literal tears stream from the eye closest to the bed you lie on, insisting that although the situation seems quite dire and horrific, you are safe and everything is alright. A dissociation of the mind and body is required if you are to endure. Breathing slowly in and out through my nose was the only thing I forced my focus on.
Psychologically, though, my mind began to turn on me once it realized we were only 120-seconds into an event which would take approximately 10 minutes. How would I do this for another eight minutes? This thought needed to be ushered away immediately, like a riotous and disorderly drunk from an otherwise peaceable party, because to entertain this idea for too long may have caused a mental panic to match the physical panic my body was in. So I ejected him. Things calmed down momentarily when the scope entered the stomach cavity, until a new sensation introduced itself. Have you ever seen the movie Alien when the little face hugger bursts through the man's midsection at the table? Or The Matrix when they force that electronic insect down his throat and it begins visibly squirming beneath the skin of Keanu's abdomen? Well, I can tell you that seeing it and feeling it are very, very different things. It felt like what nails on a chalkboard sound like. The crawling sensation though not painful, is somehow worse because of this absence. The doctor needed to take a biopsy and remove two polyps. Again I thought I was through the worst of it, and that the gastroscopy was nearly over when they cut the first polyp. I felt my stomach jump and recoil inside my body, yelping like a wounded dog. Thankfully I was unaware this would happen a second time. For had I known, I would have probably began trying to yank the instrument out of my throat. Soon they were exiting the stomach and the retching began again, but this time worse because of the air they'd injected into the stomach during examination. Now burping, gagging, covered in drool and spit, the device was retreating from deep inside my midsection. When it finally came completely out I sighed with genuine relief.
I thought I had been through some pretty tough medical procedures; I've had cameras in my urethra, I've broken my spine, I've had a metal rod drilled into my broken hand to set the bone, I had four wisdom teeth removed at once and was given no pain medication post operation. Each of these were bad, terrible even, but none of them quite match the skeevy Cronenbergesque body horror of this experience. Certainly there are worse fates to suffer, no doubt, but Jesus, if you have the chance to be sedated for an endoscopy, please take the drugs.
They diagnosed me with gastritis which, based on the picture they took inside my stomach, is pretty gnarly. It looks like the stomach is trying to become a brain. Instead of being smooth it begins to develop ridges and folds, grooves and channels. So now I'm trying to restrict my already restricted diet even more to accommodate the inflammation and irritation from the all the poking and prodding I've been subject to lately. I'll keep you updated on how that goes. Speaking of which, I need to cook dinner.
I finished Steinbeck's Winter of Our Discontent, but I can't say I was crazy about it. I started reading Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition and I'm loving it.
I'll try and write more about that tomorrow.
