was tempted to post this as “no guts, no glory”, but the whole affair was rather gutsy and had little to do with glory…after our vacation on the isle of wight i’d been to my GP to have my heartburn checked out — and he had decided to have my oesophagus, stomach, and duodenum photographed.

over the weekend i did some research on the internet and learnt that one in 14’000 dies during a gastroscopy (from heart and circulation failure), sometimes the stomach or oesophagus get punctured…i stopped looking further.

so, it’s with some trepidation (and after a nervous night spent tossing in bed) that i went to the specialist this morning. after waiting for about half an hour he invites me into his office, carries out the anamnesis and then explains what they are going to do…then i’m sent into the surgery and the very friendly nurse asks me to strip off my shoes and to lie down on my left side, and proceeds to spray an anaesthetic into my throat and to inject a barbiturate — she just has time to tell me that i might start feeling a bit dizzy and i’m gone…the next thing i remember is being told that i can now go into the adjacent room and sleep out. that was it!

about 30min later i’m awake, get a coffee and a croissant (had to stop eating and drinking the night before) and then get to see the pictures they took from my insides while i was gone. almost everything is fine, no ulcers, no cancer, just a bit of a lazy lower esophageal sphincter that doesn’t seem to close all the way. he recommends a prophylactic low dosage of a proton pump blocker.

phew…i’m quite relieved and take the bus to work.