Good evening Shop Dwellers! 50*F and windy as h*** in my corner of central MD.
Haven't been here the past couple days, since sitting in a chair leaning forward to read and type on a computer might push out stomach acid to where it doesn't belong. So I've mostly been reading "physical" magazines that I still get in the mail,
TRAINS and the
Sentinel (B&O RR HS magazine), and that helped me relax enough that the ulcer seems to have cleared. I managed to get an earlier endoscopy appt by calling and checking for cancellations on Monday, and they were able to get me in
today instead of May 7!
The procedure findings were fairly non-threatening: No "Barrett" tissue was found (a precursor to cancer), but the stomach lining has "metaplasia" - i.e. some type of molecular change that nobody really knows the significance of. Apparently I also had that 3 years ago, but the GI "establishment" wasn't showing much interest in it back then so the doctor never mentioned anything to me about it. Times have changed, and now the "best practice" is to have patients come back every
two years instead of three
, in order to keep a closer eye on it (hope the medical insurance folks will agree?). Bottom line is, the gastro academics are probably tracking everybody who exhibits metaplasia to see if it
eventually should be considered an early predictor of cancer.
Anywho...other than responding to a few people who left me comments, I don't have time to enter anything beyond this. I haven't really read all the pages from the last few days, and I want to hit the hay early tonite since the sedation meds haven't totally worn off yet...
cheers!