Defecography
While this wasn't a horrifying experience, I wouldn't recommend it to.. say... the casual patient looking to experience his or her first MRI.
To catch everyone back up: I can't empty stool from my internal pouch without the intervention of a small catheter/tube. While this can happen with a new pouch, it usually rights itself as the pouch expands and situates itself. We're approaching a year, and no change. So, she ordered a test to see exactly what is happening as I try to empty myself.
A defecography. Or, as my doctor described it, "We need to watch you poop."
Sounds exciting, right? Heading to the hospital this morning I had visions of sitting on a fancy toilet while a bunch of lab techs watch from behind some glass.
How it actually went: It started with a regular MRI to see how my pouch sits normally and to get good images of all of the surrounding muscles. Intermittently the techs (both women, luckily) would ask me to "bear down" or do whatever I would typically do when trying to have a bowel movement (except, in this instance I was completely empty. They had me do prep very similar to what's necessary for a pouchoscopy- no food or drink within four hours of the test, and an enema with tap water before to "flush" everything out).
"Bearing down" while laying flat on your back on a table suspended in an MRI machine is about as easy as it sounds. It was really difficult.... and I'm not going to lie, my ab muscles hurt a little bit from straining.
After they got all of the initial images they needed they gave me 4 gel contrast enemas (ugh). The goal is to fill the internal pouch up as full as possible so that the contrast will "light up" the outline, and clearly show what happens when I then tried to empty it. So, they toke some regular scans for a while, and then asked me to "bear down"... probably expecting the gel to come flooding out. Nothing happened. I'm going to be pooing blue contrast gel for days.
Which is good, I guess? I would have been concerned if I could have easily emptied myself during the test. The whole point is to see why I can't. They told me that they got a lot of good images of me trying.
The whole thing took maybe 40 minutes. No picks or pricks, no eating or drinking disgusting contrast fluid... And the fact that you're lying flat on a table kind of mentally disassociates what you're actually trying to do, so it doesn't feel like you're trying to poo while two people watch you through a window. (They also cover your pelvis with some kind of brace to help them get better images. It's not constraining at all, but you also don't feel exposed)
So, I hope everyone enjoyed that over share. Now I have the joy of getting back to frantically working on my Skyscraper design for my midreview Friday, but Saturday morning I leave for DISNEY WORLD!