Thursday, August 17, 2006

I'm Getting an EGD!

I am going into a hospital for an Upper Esophagogastrodueodenoscopy (EGD) tomorrow. That’s a tongue twister of a name for sticking a probe down my gullet all the way to my duodenum. Next month, I am scheduled to be probed from the other direction. You don’t even want to know why. I just thought you might enjoy knowing the word esophagogastroduodenoscopy. I assume that there is such a thing as an esophagogastroduodenoscope and that some folks work as esophagogastrodueodenoscopists. Tomorrow evening I will be postesophagogastroduodenoscopy and will be eagerly awaiting the results. MS Word doesn’t think esophagogastroduodenoscopy is a real word and underscores it with a squiggly red line. It’s a perfectly cromulent word all the same.

1 comment:

lemme howdt said...

sorry to hear that your physical problems are getting the best of you. I have avoided probing medical doctors for years - very few seem to be interested in the health of the patient outside the focus of the office visit. Heck - i'd be surprised if doctors rememebr the names of patients when they run into them in the community. And the big words that they use seem to be just to confuse the people into thinking they (the md's) are smart people. Science of all types today is more about being in an elite club that speaks a unique language rather than definiting truth or explaining how things work and putting them to higher order utility. So unless the md's are after a specific problem, i'd advise you not rto allow them on a fishing expeditition. They are never satisfied coming home empty handed and they will place you on the big pharma buy list in a microsecond, especially if an insurance carrier appears to pick up the tab.