The Fantastic Voyage (inside Neb)

Well, I've just had a BUSY two weeks. I have worked at least once a day every day since last Monday week, which was when I went to Warragul for my gastroscopy session. I was actually pencilled in for a shift that day, but it was a late change and I had to bail on work sorry to my coworkers; I hate leaving you guys in the lurch, just so you know, but I gotta look after my health.

I was going to tell you all about what it is like to have a camera shoved down your throat on the day it actually happened, but: a) I was too tired from the anaesthetic to post anything on that day; and b) I slept through the whole procedure (thanks to said anaesthetic).
I'd heard that you have to swallow this rather bulky mini-cam on a cable, which was apparently gag-a-riffic as if I didn't have enough problems with swallowing but as it turned out, it went like a dream...

Seriously, they just shoved some good stuff into my bloodstream, moved me onto my side, and ten seconds later, I was being shaken awake! I have never fallen asleep that quickly before in my life. It was AWESOME.

Anyway, I wasn't able to drive back from the clinic on my own, so I got my Ma to chauffeur me. She used the downtime to check out the Op Shops in town; luckily, she had her guide (me) to point them all out to her before I went in for examination, so while I was being invaded, she went and scoped out some bargains. I don't remember if she bought anything, but she usually buys herself some nice clothes, so I'm going with that.

After I woke up and had some supplies some free sandwiches, tea and HEAPS OF WATER because I had to fast for five hours prior and DAMN I was thirsty!!! we went to have some lunch and do some more shopping.
Important Note: Shopping under the influence of sleep-inducing drugs is a very risky business. Fortunately, I made it out with my wallet relatively unscathed. I found some good CDs for $10 each, some T-shirts for my nephew, and a few books. I may have also bought some makeup and a bra or two, or maybe that was what Ma bought - I can't seem to find those anywhere, so I probably just got confused.

In case you wondered: They said they found that I had something called a Sliding Hiatus Hernia, which is very common and often doesn't present any problems at all. It's probably the cause of food sometimes getting stuck in my guts from time to time - maybe. At any rate, I'll see my doctor this week, so I'll find out what to do next.

Other stuff:

• Starting witht the damn obvious, Michael Jackson passed away last month. I have since been reading up about his life, and feel that he had been mistreated and abused to the point where he wasn't even a real person any more. He was really talented though; As a child of the 80s and 90s I was witness to the better part of his career. I went and bought a compilation album to remember him by. Vale, Michael.
  
• My uncle was admitted to hospital last week, after a routine checkup revealed something serious. He's since been diagnosed with lymphoma (cancer of the lymph nodes); at this point I do not know how bad it is, but this type of cancer is one of the easier types to treat, depending on which type he has. I also found out that one of my cousins has been diagnosed with the same condition, within the space of a week! My thoughts go out to both of them.
• My friend Katie has returned to Ozland! It's been a long journey for her and her husband, but they have finally touched down. The only thing I need to do now is actually get in touch with her... Hello, Facebook? (And now all we need to do is con Miro back into Australia and we'll all be back on the same continent again!)
  

So much to do - tax time, cleaning up the house, catching up with friends, and generally sorting out my life... I wish there were more of me, sometimes. See you soon!

Throwing Up Stuff, Investigated

Okay, I have some news.
I went to the doctor the other day because I've been having a recurring problem with my upper digestive tract - in other words, stuff has been getting stuck in my throat. I mentioned this briefly in another post. However, this is not a new problem, but something that I have been enduring for the past five years or so.

Basically, what happens is:
1. I eat something that triggers the effect (such as bread, rice, and the famous canned tuna).
2. After i chew and swallow the first bite, I get a strange sensation in my throat just around and below my neck, as if something has got stuck in that position, aka. the gag reflex.
3. If it's just a little bit of food, I can usually have a drink of water to wash whatever is stuck there, and I can continue the rest of my meal with no problems. However, if I have been silly enough to eat too much after the first swallow, it can get stuck too far down for me to bring up immediately.

This is what happened the last time with the tuna-throwing-up incident. But last Mother's Day, I had a piece of beef pie that got stuck too far down for me to bring up on my own.
I spent the better part of the evening leaning over a bucket, trying to regurgitate this chunk of food I hadn't swallowed properly. I tried drinking water, but that was useless - it didn't knock the food loose, and I just threw the water back up again after a minute. And I wasn't game to try swallowing something else to push it down. I kept thinking of Homer Simpson stuck in the waterslide.
It took me four hours of putting up with this to start looking up stuff online about this, and one of the first things I found said

If something is suspected to be lodged in the throat,
seek medical advice urgently.

AAAAAAHHH!!!
I raced in to the emergency department, explained the problem, and was told to drink a bottle of Coke, of all things. I bought one, and hesitantly took a gulp (fully expecting this to end in an explosive disaster) - and what do you know, the damn stuff WORKED.
I still had to wait another four hours to see the doctor, though, just to make sure there wasn't anything else wrong with me... and I fell asleep in the waiting room a few times. I'd done an early shift that day, and... etc.

I'd left a note for the folks at home to explain where I'd gone and why - and when I got back, everyone was FREAKING OUT and saying "are you all right? did you die?"

On Tuesday, I finally got to see my regular GP regarding this problem. It's important to get some resolution on this, as it could get worse, and I don't fancy choking to death on something down the track. I have to make an appointment with a gastroenterologist. Hopefully then, we'll be able to see if anything is wrong with my upperguts, and work from there.

Also: I have also started playing Super Paper Mario for Wii, after having finished Super Mario Galaxy as Mario I haven't finished Luigi's game yet.

Did the Earth move for you too?

Okay, stuff has happened since the last post.
Well, that's a bit bloody obvious, isn't it? It's not as if stuff stops happening when no-one bothers to update their blog!

• Krissy has spent the past fortnight attending classes at Tafe, and freaking out about the work she has to do. It seems that there is a tutor there whose method involves throwing the students into the deep end, ie. giving them instructions on what they need to do, and then basically telling them to do it without explicitly telling them how. Which I think is reasonable, but it can be disorienting for new students, especially those who have come into art with all the pre-conceived ideas on "What Art Is Supposed To Be". His aim is to get the students to learn these methods through exploration, rather than through rote learning, but it can be very stressful and confusing for the novice. Oh, and to those of you who have already been through GippsTafe's Art Department, you all should know exactly who I am {p.b.} talking about. :D
  
• We had an earth tremor here last Friday. At about 9pm, we experienced about ten seconds of the earth wobbling about us. It was a reasonably big tremor, too. The epicentre was in the Korumburra/Warragul area, but it was felt across most of the state, including Melbourne. It was all perfectly normal, and nothing got seriously damaged, but a lot of people were worried. It freaked the hell out of my sister; she was saying, "God, my chair moved across the room!!!" Yes, because that's never happened during an earthquake before.
• Also, Krys found two big spiders in her son's bedroom last week, though not at the same time. One of them was a huntsman (which is big and icky but not dangerous), the other a largish white-tail (which may or may not be dangerous, as I mentioned here). Both of these spiders are frequently found inside houses, especially when the weather changes from warm to cool, so we're trying to keep our windows closed as much as possible now!
  
• There's also a tropical cyclone threatening the Queensland coastline, not far from where my Dad and other family members live. Cyclone Hamish is presently heading south-east, away from where they are, and it seems to be weakening now, but there are still a lot of communities worring about this, and preparing to bunker down. I haven't called up my Dad yet, but I'll do that tonight, if I'm able to.
• Krys' man Andrew scored the part of Gaston in the local production of Beauty and the Beast - awesomeness! He's been practicing his singing in preparation like a good actor should. Also, they've been rehearsing for the other play that they're both in - more details as they come. I'll actually be able to post pictures of them this time, since I only had Dinkycam with me for the last one, may it rest in peace.
  
• It's been the Labour Day long weekend, which means two things: one, work at the service station/s has been really frickin' busy (doesn't help that we're short-staffed again) and two, we had a problem with the EFTPOS facility. Okay, get this, when I went in to work on Saturday, I discovered that we had a *new* temporary EFT console/pinpad thingy, which wasn't integrated with the register like the regular one was (and which, hopefully, will be fixed soon). Luckily, it didn't require a major in electronics to figure out how it worked - it just required a few extra steps, and I was able to cope with the day's trade.
  But, when I opened the shop the next day, I discovered that the *new* EFT console wasn't working, because something had tripped off the fuse on that particular circuit. Long story short, the AC adaptor some black box thingy that the power supply goes through had burnt out during the night, and I mean that literally - it had scorch marks on it. So... we spent the next two days of the long weekend filling out dozens of manual paper vouchers. At least the shop didn't burn down.
  
• Oh, and Krys wants me to mention this - A few nights ago, I spent two hours gagging on a piece of tuna. All that happened was that I ate some canned tuna, and it didn't go down well. I don't know, I guess it got stuck on the way down, though I wasn't choking or suffocating. This seems to happen sometimes when I eat something starchy, like bread or rice, and usually if I have a drink of water it goes away - but this time it seems the water didn't help.
  Anyway, I must have sounded really bad from the bathroom, because my sister could hear me from her room, and she asked me if I was okay. I said yeah, I just had something to bring up. She spent the next hour or so freaking out about me, thinking I'd got food poisoning or something, wondering if I needed to go to hospital, and then she promptly fell asleep! Sympathy fail?
  So, I spent an hour in the bathroom, sipping water and gagging into the sink - and then I spent the next hour in my room with a bucket, because standing in the bathroom was boring and I wanted to finish playing Twilight Princess.

My god, that sounds really sad. "I threw up tuna while playing Zelda." I have to get a hobby or something, I don't think the blogosphere was designed for such lame-ass postings.

Well, so much for my update. How was your week?