Adding to the fun

Everything was just going swimmingly along when all of the sudden my skin started itching like it was inhabited by itch-gnomes hatcheting away at my flesh with itch-poisoned blades. "Yay!" I thought, as I plowed my nails into my itch gashes. Needless to say, I contacted the the team at Stanford, and met with them to discuss, and the thought is that the biliary stent placed way back in June is somehow "clogged", and I'm developing jaundice symptoms, so I get to have an encore performance of this awesome little procedure called an ERCP, which I originally had when the stent was first installed.

The best part of the ERCP, aside from being completely out, is that when they put the endoscope into my gullet and start poking around my tender vittles in order to evaluate the condition of the common bile duct and stent is that they may inflate my stomach and other adjacent organs with air in order to move the scope around and do whatever they need to do. From my last ERCP, I can say that this air fills me up like a beer keg, but unfortunately there's no party. This should be an out-patient procedure, and I should be coming home the same day, albeit with a slightly higher psi rating than when I arrived.

I'm not looking forward to becoming a human keg, although I am looking forward in having these jaundice symptoms alleviated because the itching is maddening. Ironically, the stent and all the plumping it's involved in will be coming out with the surgery I'm having in about a week, but if I let this continue then I'll likely start looking like a block of cheddar cheese, and have other interesting side effects like sepsis and/or renal/liver failure.

Of course, it's possible that my first ERCP wasn't 100% indicative of what every one will be like. Here's to hoping that they only need to use the same amount of air to fill up a road cycling bicycle tire, and not the volume used on a mud and snow tire.