Upper GI Test

Maria had her upper GI today. The short version: everything is fine.

It was kind of neat to watch. It's a real-time xray so we could see her stomach and intestines on a TV screen. They started to pump the barium into her NG tube and we could see it spreading out like a black cloud in her stomach. It filled her stomach and quickly started to move into her small intestine. We could also see the shunt tubing. Shunts are actually painted with a substance (it might even be barium now that I think about it) that is opaque to xrays so that doctors can easily check the condition of a shunt without having to resort to CT/MRI scans.

So they kept pumping more and more barium into her. The radiologist turned her this way and that and occasionally pressed his fingers into her abdomen to move things around. He then withdrew the NG tube a few centimeters so that it was in her esophagus then the technician pumped in more barium so they could see the structure of her esophagus. Cathy and I were both standing at the head of the bed in our lead aprons, each holding one of her hands and generally trying to keep her calm. Suddenly, there is a pop and I feel wetness on my hands; this is not something you really want to happen in a hospital. Well, the technician had been pumping the barium hard into the NG tube and took her hand away from the port to hold Maria. The syringe popped out of the port and spewed barium all over Maria's face and our hands. It was actually pretty funny. None of it got in her eyes or anything. They'd seen enough by this time so the doctor sucked out some of the barium (an advantage of the NG tube over drinking the stuff). He told us the structures were all perfect. She didn't reflux (leak stomach contents into her esophagus) at all during the test, though that doesn't mean she never refluxes.

Maria was, as always, a perfect sweetie. She got kind of fussy because of the speed that the barium was going in, but as soon as it was done she was her usual all smiles. She was pretty sleepy, since we had to wake her from her nap to go to this appointment, so was a bit less happy than normal but held up well. The whole thing took only about 30 minutes.

Monday she has her EGD, where they knock her out and put a camera down her throat to look for thing such as irritation of the esophagus which would indicate reflux. This is more of a big deal test. We have to be down there at 7 am and go through admitting. She'll be there for hours because they have to give her general anesthesia, do the test, then give her time in recovery. So Cathy's planning to give her a quiet weekend because she (actually *they*) will be pretty stressed on Monday.

In other news, her hearing aids continue to work intermittently at best. Frequently when we check them they aren't working at all and, of course, if they dont' work they are just ear plugs. She has definitely regained some hearing, though the audiologist doesn't believe us and the hearing therapist was skeptical until she started to work with Maria and could see she was hearing better. This means it's frustrating to think we might be blocking what hearing she has with defective hearing aids. Both the hearing therapist and audiologist don't really seem to believe us that the hearing aids aren't working. I know I'm getting pretty tired of them not believing us about stuff. Cathy sees Maria all the time so, silly me, I think she's probably a good witness to what's going on with her. Still, part if it is the whole hearing treatment community is built around the idea of sensoneural deafness (i.e. the ears don't function and it doesn't get better) and generally don't seem to be familiar with auditory neuropathy (the ears work but the signals either don't get to the brain or aren't process right -- in some cases auditory neuropathy gets better as damaged brain pathways are reformed).

Maria has an appointment with a new audiologist (in the same practice) on Thursday and they will check the hearing aids and test her hearing. Cathy is going to make sure they test her without the hearing aids, hoping to prove to them that Maria really has gained some hearing. If this one is as bad as the last one, she's going to start shopping around outside of that practice.