Archive for gastroscopy:
Having a Gastroscopy
In a previous post I mentioned I was suffering from abdominal pains and awaiting a gastroscopy examination. On Wednesday I had that gastroscopy. Fortunately I am well but unfortunately it wasn’t pleasant!
I have a phobia of needles and so when I saw the size of the needle they were going to use to sedate me, I opted out and requested the throat spray – designed to numb your throat. The surgeon preffered this method also as the nursing staff can talk to your throughout and you fully comprehend, unlike being sedated where you can hear but are not fully aware and so tend to thrash about.
A guard was placed over my mouth to stop be biting down on the camera, I was given oxygen through my nasal passages and laid on my side. The camera went in and I began to panic. Breathing is difficult but you have to concentrate on it or you would end up thinking you were going to die. The nurse who was beside me kept reassuring me just to breath and I would be fine.
As the camera passed down my throat and towards my stomach my body continually attempted to reject it by trying to throw it back up, much like when you are being sick. As it couldn’t do this, my body began to shake and my mother – who was watching – thought I was taking a fit. In addition to this unpleasant site and uncomfortable feeling for me, I kept belching as air was pumped into my stomach so the surgeon could see!
After a few minutes a thin plastic tube was passed through the camera to my stomach to take a biopsy, which was painless. The second biopsy I felt as the surgeon pulled hard to remove the tubing – that too was uncomfortable. I was sooooo happy to have the camera removed as I could feel it inside me and by the time the surgeon was nearly finished my body has stopped fighting and I was able to breath normally without showing any side effects.
Thankfully, I am well and they will test for Cealic disease, an intolerance to gluten. I need to wait up to 14 days for the results and if it is negative then the surgeon believes I may simply be suffering from severe Irritable Bowel Syndrome for which there is no cure.
Below is an image of what a gastroscopy looks like on camera followed by a YouTube video of the procedure.
[youtube:http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=hm1nEPHxJ0E=1 450 450]
Another Week Whizzed By
Another week has wizzed by without a single blog post from me, mainly because I’ve been busy working and don’t seem to have a minute to spare. Last week my dad and his partner flew off to Egypt for the week so I spent the evening with them. Saturday my girlfriend and I did a “double date” with one of my best friend’s Gareth and his partner.
The double date was particularly useful in a business sense as Gareth and I had a chance to talk about websites. A few months ago we started a workout site, with Gareth writing the articles and me doing website maintenance, seo, promption etc. The agreement works well as we each make up 50% of what is required – good content and good promotion.
In an attempt to compete with leading fitness sites and provide visually appealing video media, I’m going to talk to a boxing club owner about using his gym as the site to shoot clips. In return for free advertising I’m sure he’ll be quite keen. I’m also going to design a small site for him so hopefully we’ll both come out with something beneficial.
I spoke previously about article distribution and the free backlinks that could be accumulated from a well written article. Distributing and editing articles yourself is time consuming, so I decided to try a distribution site. For $6 they fired it out to hundreds of sites and less than 24 hours later it had been indexed by Google across 5-10 sites. I opted for deep linking, i.e. a link not pointing to my homepage but to a subpage. I’ll be monitoring the success of the service in due course and let you know if it brings in the backlinks I need.
Today I had a consultation for my gastroscopy examination, hopefully one step closer to curing my stomach problems! The longer you leave something the more you worry and I’ve been unwell for two months now…you can imagine how I feel! I just have to stay positive and my busy schedule helps take my mind off things. Unfortunately I was sick twice, once whilst getting blood taken but I’m back home now and going to relax with The Wire. I’m a huge Soprano’s fan and my girlfriend bought me the first series of The Wire recently as it has had some rave reviews. So far so good, I’d definately recommend it.
Aside from meeting the boxing gym owner on Friday, I’ve got to find time to add more content to StudentsUncovered.com and contact nightclubs to arrange for free entry for my photographers. I’m excited about launching the site, I’ve put in a lot of work to make it a quality student portal and will continue to do so. However, I am still shocked at some people’s views to website advertising. In my previous post I mentioned how I was going to offer free advertising to local letting agents, and I did, with not one response! Perhaps when my site ranks #1 for “Student Accommodation in *city*” then they’ll pay attention to me!
Good luck with your persuits,
Khalid.