Friday morning I had to be at the hospital at 7:15 for a "Gastric Emptying Study." 

I've had stomach problems since I was a senior in high school.  I've had numerous tests and such run since then.  My GI Dr feels as if I have an "undertermined motility disorder."  In other words, for some unknown reason, my body does NOT digest food in the way that it should.  Or in the time that it should.  There are two medications that can help treat this problem, but I have had bad side effects to both of them, so therefore, they are out of the question. 

Over the last couple of months, my stomach pain has worsened.  I think a lot of it, honestly, is all the stress.  But I'm not a Dr, so who knows.  I feel like I have a hole in my gut.  Gross, I know, but true.  I've tried to cut back on different foods, but don't notice a difference when I do.  I've lived off of Sonic smoothies for the past few months.  For some reason, the yogurt tends to soothe my tummy while filling me up at the same time.

I saw my GI Dr on Wedneday.  After examining and talking to me, he decided to do this "Gastric Emptying Study" to see just how fast my stomach digests food.  He feels like when I eat, food just stays at the top of my stomach and doesn't move through in a timely manner-thus causing nausea and vomiting, along with just a general icky feeling.  If this "Gastric Emptying" study comes back normal, he's going to scope my stomach and look to make sure there's not an ulcer.

When I walked into the Nuclear Medicine room for my test, there was a little tray and a chair.  On the chair was a tablecloth, a little box of corn flakes, some sugar, napikin wrapped silverware and a little carton of milk.  I felt like all I was missing was the candles.  Otherwise, I'd have had myself a candlelit dinner for one! :) 

Anyway, for this test, I had to fix me some cornflakes, and just before eating, the tech squirted a syringe full of "radiation" into my cereal.  It was tasteless and colorless, thank goodness!  I ate my bowl of cornflakes and never knew the stuff was in there.

After eating, I climbed up on this big table.  The tech put two warm blankets over me and then proceeded to slide me down under this big machine.  It was open, but it really reminided me of some sort of MRI machine or something.  It came down practically on top of my stomach and stayed that way the whole time.  The tech set the timer for an hour and I drifted off into dream land.

I will get the results sometime early this week.  I'm hoping tomorrow.  I really have a feeling that they are going to come out normal and we'll end up scoping here in a few weeks.  It's just the way things have played out in the past. 

So we'll see. I'll keep ya posted.