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A camera up me arse

No prizes for guessing what I had done today. The title kinda gives it away. Being woken up with the words "morning. Time for your enema" is something you just don't want to hear, even from a sweet phillipino nurse. 

So at 7am this morning I was having my bottom pumped full of goodness only knows what to make sure I was empty inside ready for my photographs. I would liken it to the way you get the kids ready for school photo day- having a good wash, tidying your hair, making sure you're clean- but that would just be wrong. Oops- did it anyway. 

So after the contents of my pouch and rectum are evacuated in record time the porter comes and takes me down to the Endoscopy suite. I've been here before so know the drill. Check you're you,date of birth and any allergies. Tell you all the things that might go wrong and then get you to sign your life away. Literally. 

That's then consent procedure done and then you're wheeled into one of many endoscopy rooms, no bigger than your average family size bathroom, where they repeat the whole procedure again. 

I wasn't even offered any drugs this time. They either think I'm hardcore or they forgot. And being hardcore I didn't ask. 

Lying on your left side, knees up by your chest and arse out for all to see it's time to begin. The jelly goes on, the scope goes in and it's journey begins. You can see it all on the monitor which is quite a surreal experience. You are watching the insides of your body on the screen in the same way you might sit down to watch eastenders. 

But what's this I can see on the screen? It's like a silver snake making it's way into view. It opens it's jaws and takes a bite of my bowel- ouch! It brings tears to my eyes. "Just taking biopsies" the doctor mutters. Four more bites it takes. I can see the blood trickling from where it's sunk it's jaws into me. 

And then it is all pulled out, in one swift motion. It hardly took 5 minutes. They wipe your bottom to get rid of the jelly and the blood. It's a very strange experience to have someone else wipe your bottom when you're a grown adult. 

And then you're handed a sheet with details of the procedure and photographs. Colour photos of your insides. Oh goody! So look away now if you're squeamish. 






They did notice some ulcers in the pouch (the white dot on pic 3 shows one quite clearly) which may be indicative of pouchitis (an infection/inflammation of the pouch) but I will have to wait until the biopsies come back. It's quite strange to get ulcers in your small bowel as a colitis sufferer because colitis affects only the large bowel. I'm just hoping this doesn't mean I've got Crohns. That's all I bloody need!

NB x
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