Here's two corn-made clear plastic cups 3/4 full of white milky liquid, drink within a half hour. Sounds simple enough. Two gowns, one that opens to the front and the other that opens to the back and a warm blanket - ok. I cry thinking about what they are really asking me to do. Guzzle down these two glasses of fluoroscopic contrast which by the way "doesn't taste too bad, but it is a little think" the rad tech tells me. As I sit there in my two-gown motif, wrapped in a warm blanket and my purple zip-hoodie and lovely tan no slip socks, I cautiously put the glass to my nose, I wish I could describe the smell - nothing putrid, but medicinal maybe even a hint of Elmer's glue. The consistency is that of school glue or an uber thick milkshake. I'm still crying but Shawn's there cheering me on.
I take the first sip - a very small sip. Ok, very thick - and for someone who is NOT a texture kind of person, almost sickening thick.
"Shawn, it's like glue, I don't think I can do this."
"Sure you can, just drink it down fast"
Apprehensive, I try, I don't get more than two guzzles and my gag reflex kicks in. With a quick wretch and gag I make a lunge for the trash can. Sobbing begins again.
"Don't think about throwing it up, just drink it down and be done with it, you can do it. Think it would hurt me to have a sip" I pass him the cup, he takes a small sip. "Yeah that's pretty thick."
I'm still thinking how impossible this task seems, it's not just the texture that clings to every surface in my mouth, and drips off my uvula into the back of my throat, it's the subtle hint of this indescribable taste that lingers like smoke in the back of my throat. The rad tech checks on me
"How's it going" she asks in her chipper bounce.
"Not so good, I'm urping it when when I drink it"
She tries to comfort me by telling me it's a female in her 20's thing and how old people and young ones can manage it, but there's something about being in my twenties and a female that make me have an aversion - but she can try the child prep with me - which is simply adding chocolate syrup and a straw.
My mother raised me to think that chocolate fixes EVERYTHING. Good test score (but not 100% for us overachievers) have a box of chocolate, smacked really hard on the dive at practice that you hate, here's some chocolate to motivate you to try it again, broken heart - here's two boxes, broken arm - eat some chocolate while the doc is pulling the pins out with a pair of pliers. As I get older I realize that chocolate doesn't exactly fix everything - but it does make things better, tolerable until you yourself are ready to move on. So when the rad tech mentioned chocolate syrup I thought ok I can do this. I really can. The first sips through the straw were even better. I didn't feel like my mouth was being plastered white as if I had been dunked in a barrel of water and asked to eat a box of powdered donuts - with no hands. And I tasted more chocolate than the glue. I sipped and sipped, and gagged and gagged some more. And if you haven't figured it out, I cried. How embarrassing to be sitting in a hallway, doing something lots of other people have done before and failing - loud enough for everyone to hear. I kept trying with Shawn rooting me on, thank goodness he's not a sympathetic puker - it would have been disastrous.
I finished about 2/3 of the first cup and couldn't stomach it any more and I saw a moat of chocolate floating at the bottom of the second, untouched cup and thought I would give it a go. It was more chocolately and I got a second wind - I can do this I thought, Shawn flipping thru a magazine (back to front like I read them) trying to distract me. Every sip was causing retching and gagging. But I was so determined to finish at least one - only to finish the other one, and if it took me too long a third so there would be no gaps in the imaging. I think that's what broke my spirit - knowing if I did finish my first two, there would most likely be more to come. The rad techs tried to give me motivation but also said, if you can't do it, we won't make you, you're in charge. But I was so determined to prove them, Shawn and myself wrong.
I stared at my 2/3 and 1/2 empty cups.
"Just chug it down honey, real quick"
I tried, again without the straw, only to feel my sides pucker and started to retch uncontrollably, but not enough to actually produce anything but a wicked amount of white saliva since my stomach had been properly emptied per the 2nd bowel prep in 5 days.
"Ok that's it, you're done" Shawn said.
It was such a relief and yet I felt like such a failure. Seriously, how hard is it to drink down two, presumably 8-12oz of thick fluid in 30minutes? But I know I tried, the hardest I possibly could, but no amount of try could get the glue down. So entrails partially coated, nauseated and defeated we left.
Moral of the story - chocolate does not fix everything and I cannot drink fluoroscopy contrast.
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