Friday January 30, 2015 San Francisco CA.
Today was the day I was going down to the city to get my throat checked out to see if any of those BBQ brush wires were still in my throat and what was going on to make my throat sore if there weren’t any wires in it.
This meant I had to get up earlier than normal to get down there in time as it was a bit more than a two hour drive.
Frist stop, the well driller guy
The well driller guy’s place was on the way, so I stopped in there to try to get an idea when he might be going to drill a new water well as he had said earlier it might be around this time.
I just barely caught the guy as he was just starting to pull out in his truck, but he recognized me and stopped. I talked with him and told him I wanted to go up to Oregon soon for a couple weeks or so, so when was he going to start drilling? He said it’d be a good time to go to Oregon as his truck was in for repairs. Ok, good.
San Francisco Vets hospital
I arrived early and first went over to what they call Hoptel, a place I was going to have to stay at the hospital because I wasn’t supposed to drive after the procedure because of the sedation drugs they were going to give me when they looked down my throat with the scope. I didn’t have another person with me to drive so I took this option. I could have gotten someone to help out with this, but I didn’t know I needed someone until I was making the appointment and it was too late and I wanted to get this thing done as I’d been waiting long enough.
Anyway, I got my room set up and had a short nap before my appointment at 1pm. As long as I had a room, I thought a nap would be a good idea and it was.
I was a half hour early for my appointment and then waited until about 2:30 to be called. It seemed they did all the colonoscopy people first and me last.
I had decided to try this scope procedure without the sedation, so I could drive after the procedure. The Doc warmed me that if things got complicated she would need to sedate me so I told her do it only if she thought I needed it.
Three women work me over
So, I have these three women around prepping me. All of a sudden two of them grabbed my head while the other one, the doc, pushed the scope down my throat. Ouch. Swallow they said. Getting it by the wind tube was the hard part and it hurt a bit, but then they said that’s the worst part over.
I had a flat screen to watch things as she investigated my esophagus and stomach looking for things.
Now, before we started the doc said I probably didn’t have any wires inside me as if I did they likely got passed. She didn’t find any wires but she did find some slight stomach erosion which she said is likely causing the heartburn like symptoms which I thought might be the wires. She took some biopsies and then pulled the scope out.
They took some blood to do a check for a virus that can cause this and will get the biopsies analyzed and I was good to go.
They set me up with another appointment with the Gastrointestinal clinic in a few weeks.
Oh, she prescribed some more meds, PPI’s for acid reflux.
So now I had to go down and get the meds which was ok, but now, it was just after four PM on a Friday afternoon which meant that the Golden Gate Bridge was a zoo I didn’t want to be on to get home, so what to do?
I had a room to stay the night, but I didn’t really want to do that as I knew I wouldn’t’ t sleep well.
Went for a walk
I decided to go for a walk down by the ocean and let most of that traffic die down a bit.
I walked around for a little over an hour and this was my view. The bridge might look nice from here, but the thing was loaded with cars going home right now.
And then a nap
I headed back to the my room and decided to take a nap until six or so. I made it until 6:30 then checked out and headed on home. Good thing I waited. The traffic here is never great, but it wasn’t too bad even if I did have to drive it in the dark.
Headed out for Oregon shortly
I had them make my next appointment about three weeks down the road, so now, I’m cleared to go to Oregon for a bit. I should be able to get things together for that trip in a few days and I’ll be off. My plan is to go up to Port Orford to do some kayaking in the rivers in that area.
So, even though they didn’t find any wires, the scoping out still needed to be done to find out what was going on so I was happy to get that over with.