The worst day, ever.

Or so I like to complain.

One of the standard tests in Crohn's disease is the small bowel follow-through (sbft), which is essentially an x-ray of the bowels. Unfortunately, the prep for the sbft isn't particularly fun. First you need to evacuate the bowels and get them moving, which can lead to much cramping and pain, and then you have to consume two bottles of this chalky, faux fruit flavoured barium drink. The barium is what makes the bowels stand out in the x-ray.

The techs need to take a number of x-rays as you drink the barium to find out how much it has travelled through your system, and when it finally has started to pass into the colon, you get to go to the super-x-ray machine, with a doctor who prods your guts with a giant oversize mallet thing (like a Styrofoam Thor's hammer).  One perk is that you can actually see your x-rayed guts live on the monitor, and watch them move around as I'm prodded. (The downsides: getting fried by x-rays: bye bye offspring!, and having to pass all that barium at the end.)

In the spirit of sharing, I thought I'd show what one of those x-rays looks like.

Do you see on the lower left where the white bowel seems to dissolve into a whisp of 'smoke', and is very thin compared to all the other white parts? That's the diseased part. Because of inflammation and scar tissue, that part of the bowel is very narrow, and not much barium can sit inside there, hence the wispy look.

Anyway, that was my day. Thought you might be interested.