I went in for an endoscopy recently to investigate the reason for decades of stomach aches (I figured if it hasn’t gone away since the 80’s, I may as well check it out).
Well, the traditional method didn’t yield anything, so they suggested trying another procedure called a Pillcam.
This one had me excited, as it’s literally a matter of swallowing a pill that has a camera and light and it travels through the body taking pictures – 2 per second for a total of about 50,000, which are then turned into a video tour.
It reminded me of the old movie Fantastic Voyage, or more recently, Inner Space.
So I spent eight hours this week with a special belt around my body and a data recorder over my shoulder that was pulling in the wireless transmission of photos.
The whole process was so neat to me, though when I asked the doctor if I could get a copy of the video, she looked at me like I was crazy and said no, because I’d have no way to play it. Apparently they have some system for tens of thousands of dollars that’s required.
Bummer.
Anyway, one of the rules while the process took place was that I should not be near any source of powerful electromagnetic fields, as they could mess with my transmission of data.
They had two examples of things to avoid – MRI and “amateur (ham transitor) radios”.
The fact that people still use ham radios was as fascinating to me as the Pillcam thing.
That reminded me of another movie, Pump Up the Volume.
I’ve got a week or so until I find out the results, and I’m hoping there is some magical finding, because I can’t face the prospect of this being a gluten issue.
if so, I’ll suffer for my pizza and beer.