Getting 2 more units of blood today... 4 hours in the hospital. Fun fun! How's everybody enjoying their day?

hope your doin alright buddy :-/

tell them doctors to fix ya up

Hang in there man. While the treatment options for your disease seem horrifying they work. At least it works. Which hospital are you at? Make sure you are in a good GI place... It varies so much around here it's crazy. Our local hospital can't be trusted for stitches, we have 2 world class hospitals across the river in Augusta, but neither are GI experts. I drive my Dad to Charleston every other month to go to MUSC. Their GI dept is among the best in the world and it has one of the biggest budgets of any teaching hospital in the country. It is a completely different experience than anywhere else we have been with my dad in the past 16 years.

Something relevant to your case, MUSC is testing a new type of CT scanner produced by Siemens. It is supposed to give the clarity of an MRI but with the contrast capabilities of a CT or Xray. This is huge for viewing blood vessels and GI tracts with contrast dye. They called my dad last summer and asked him if he would come down and have a test done. They were looking for a weakened wall in his large intestine that can't be reached from either end with a scope. They showed he did not have one, and the images were stunning. You could see every single blood vessel attached to his GI tract. It really is a game changer. The hospitality is unreal. I can't say good enough things about the place and I urge you to book a flight down there if you are in any way unsatisfied with your car or doubtful of you diagnosis or treatment options.

Im at Mercy hospital for my GI. A young woman named Matilda Hagan is my doctor. Very bright, has her internship through Yale.. knows her shit. I get my transfusions done right in my home town, which is also one of the top 10 hospitals in the country, Peninsula Regional Medical Center.

And ironically enougu, I just had that CT scan this morning with the iodine IV and the borium shake. Was pretty cool lol.

I must have missed it. Whats wrong why you getting units of blood? And get well soon

Thanks man, I have severe Ulcerative Colitis. They did blood work and my hemoglobin levels are like less than half of what they need to be.. So they gave me 2 units of blood, and my numbers are still low.. so they're giving me 2 more. I expect them to still be low though, so I'll probably be in here next week for the same ole shit.

Sucks, but it's all good. Thank god for union benefits.

Yeah that is the old school dual CT. I had one of those done when I was younger. That Barium is nasty. The one my dad had did not involve an IV. You drink the contrast dye, no barium. They wait a set amount of time and start the CT. As your digestive system absorbs the dye it lights up all of the blood vessels directly connected to it and none of the surrounding stuff. They said the biggest difference was the quality of the imaging. The new CT was supposed to give MRI like image quality and it did. They used my dad's test as one of the first 100 they sent to Siemens to help tune the machine. There were only 2 in the world at that time.

I'm glad you are comfortable with your doctor. That goes a long way.

Well hopefully, but unrealistically I won't need another CT, but that sounds a lot easier than what I had done. I appreciate the sentiment from you guys a lot..

And on a completely unrelated note, I just got an interview offer from Amazon working as maintenence at one of their data centers.. whaaat? That's a dream job lol.

Sweet! That would be a great way to step into the networking side of electrical work which is indoors and $$$