Medical Mysteries

In the past two weeks I have had blood work, an ulcer breath test, an ultrasound of my gall bladder and an EGD (short for esophagogastroduodenoscopy) which have all come back showing that I am in perfectly good health. I don't have an ulcer after all and my gall bladder seems to be in great shape. That is great news, of course. I'd be thrilled except for the fact that I have this almost constant pain in my stomach/chest area that is still a complete mystery. Which makes it difficult to fix. I actually felt almost no pain at all for the entire day yesterday, which is when I had the EGD. This is when they put a tube down your throat with a tiny camera on it so they can examine your esophagus, stomach, and the upper part of your intestine. In order to do this, they give you a sedative that mostly knocks you out and to you it feels like you were totally unconscious because it has an amnesia effect. So I don't remember anything that happened from shortly after they gave me the drug to about an hour later and the following few hours are pretty fuzzy as well. It causes you to be very dizzy, unsteady, groggy, and sleepy for several hours and they say not to drive or make important decisions for 24 hours afterward. So I guess taking that drug every day wouldn't be a very convenient way to manage pain--but it sure felt good to be pain-free for a day.