There are a few things in life that I’ve always hated doing that, over the years past, I always seemed to end up doing anyway. The top of my list of things I hate doing are:

• Moving
• Changing out drum brakes
• Rebuilding Harley Davidson Sportsters
• Drinking barium

So far I seem to have managed to distance my self from the top 3 but the 4th just seems to be coming back to haunt me on a disturbingly frequent basis. Like today for instance.

Today was another trip to the VA to be poked, prodded, peeked at and, yes, given a pint of barium to drink whilst doing various low impact gymnastics on a cold, hard, x-ray table. This was made all the more interesting by being occasionally semi-crushed with the x-ray machine itself while the doctor running it did his best to flatten me out like he was ironing some recalcitrant pair of pants that refused to unwrinkle.

This lovely adventure was filed under the phrase; “Upper GI”.

Anyone who has undergone this procedure will know well enough the joys of lying on a rock hard slab with your limbs and body in various unnatural positions and trying to suck down swallow after swallow of this amazingly thick, nasty tasting liquid through a straw while holding your breath at the same time.

I should get paid to do this I think.

The good news is that my last major episode with RLS (plus!) jerking me violently out of a sound sleep a few weeks ago didn’t appear to have damaged the fundoplication surgery I had done last May. The bad news is that I’ve been feeling more and more like I did before the surgery was done in the first place.

So the endoscope is next but that I don’t mind as much. They give me lots of good drugs and I don’t have to drink any of that bloody barium.

There was a bit if fun during the events of today though. While I was being maneuvered around on the table I found myself in a rather ridiculous position when the straw was once again thrust into my mouth and I was told to drink. Since this was near the end of the session the level of liquid was low in the cup so the x-ray technician assisting the doctor had to bring the cup to a more upright position. When she did so the straw, which is made of a much thicker plastic that your standard McDonald’s variety, flipped out of my mouth during a full draw, caught itself in my left nostril for a split second and then catapulted a full load of barium onto the ceiling above the x-ray machine.

The doctor and the x-ray technician were still staring at the ceiling when I left and muttering something about getting someone up there to clean it off.