Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Botox?

Tomorrow I might be getting Botox injections tomorrow but not for what you might think. The current theory is that I am suffering from a Gastric Outlet Obstruction, or in other words the pyloric valve, the stomachs outlet, may not be dilating correctly and causing me to throw up. For most people they deal with ulcers or they a cancer of some kind that can cause the blockage. For me they think it may just be my pyloric valve not functioning correctly.

Image found here

So a couple of options for me is to use a balloon to dilate the valve and see if stretching it out can help. The other option is to inject the muscles around the valve with Botox. This would cause the muscles to be paralyzed and the valve to stay open. The hope would be that this would allow the food to pass through into the small intestines without much resistance from the valve. 

Image found here
I'm not sure exactly if the surgeon who will be doing this procedure is going to start with the balloon or do the Botox. I will talk to him more about it before we get this underway. I have to be at the hospital at 11:15 am and it probably wont start till 1 or 2. Usually this procedure is done with a twilight sedation in the endoscopy center but my surgeon is a bit worried about the complexity of my case, so he is going to do the procedure under general anesthesia, in a surgical suite. I think it is a bit of an over kill but better to be safe than sorry. 

Since this is being done under general anesthesia, I will probably be out of it most of the day. I have learned it takes me a while to wake up from the anesthesia and it leaves me pretty groggy. I will update everyone when I can.

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