Drinking Paint
Jun 30th, 2008 at 9:40 pm by Susie
So I have to have a CAT scan later this week, and today I had to go pick up a bottle of this barium crap from the imaging center. I made the mistake of asking the guys I work with if they ever had to drink it. “What’s it like?” I asked the IT director.
“It runs right through you like a locomotive,” he said with glee.
I stared at him in horror.
“No, really, it’s not that bad,” he said. “Just don’t lift up to let a little air out. You might get more than you bargained for.”
“Are you saying I need to wear adult Depends?”
“Nah, it’s not that bad. Honest!”
When I was going down in the elevator to go home, I showed the stuff to our controller. “Yeah, I had to drink that once,” he said.
“How bad is it?” I said.
“It’s not that it tastes bad - it doesn’t really have any flavor at all,” he said. “It’s the consistency. It’s like chalk. No, it’s like drinking a can of paint.”
Oh, I can’t wait.
I can’t drink it. I instantly puke it up. Everytime I need it for a CT scan or fluoroscope, they have to put it in me by nasogastric tube. It doesn’t taste that bad– sort of like baking soda mixed with chalk– but it has the consistency of latex paint and the mouthfeel of phlegm. Even thinking about it makes me gag.
Good luck.
(Nasogastric tubes are extremely uncomfortable, but I find them preferable to repeated vomiting.)
Bring a change of clothing down to the skin. It ain’t the barium, it’s the laxatives, and if you’ve got fresh clothes, it’s not so awful.