Bowel Transit Test

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As many of you know,  I have been having lots of problem with my stomach again. Finding a gastro doctor was the hardest part. Now that I have found a great gastro doctor its time to get nasty tests done.  The doctor I am seeing is at the Henry Ford Hospital.  We leave 3 hours away.  My gastro doctor ordered a bowel transit test. This test measures how long it takes for food to travel through the digestive tract.  She is doing tests I have never gotten done in my life.

This test requires you to swallow a capsule filled with 24 rubber band markers looking markers that show up on an x-ray.

Two weeks before Thanksgiving on a Wednesday I went to the hospital to swallow the capsule.  I instructed not to take any laxatives a week before and during the test. The doctor wants to see how your system works naturally. In five days you will return to get the x-ray.  If all twenty-four markers are still in your system they will you come back two days later.

Monday I received my first x-ray.  The nurse told me all 24 markers are in my system. Eighteen of them are still in my stomach and five of them just entered my small bowel. Because none of them passed I had to go back on Wednesday (Day before Thanksgiving).

Got up traveled three hours to get my second x-ray. The nurse they still see twenty-two rubberbands. Two are still seen in the stomach and eighteen are in a cluster in the small bowel and two are seen entering the colon. Two of them they can't find, but they don't think I passed it. They just think it just not showing up or hiding behind stool.  Colon Transit test was an easy test to do. There was no discomfort.

It will be interesting to hear what the diagnose is.

Now the next test I have to get done is Endoscopy with Camera Capsule placement and a colonoscopy