I’ve had stomach X-rays done to me various times, and each time they have me drink a barium milkshake in order to see what shows up on the moniter better. Why do they use barium? Just curious.
Barium sulfate coats the stomach and it is opaque to X-rays. So barium sulfate shows up on the radiograph and the doctor can then see the outline of your stomach. It’s difficult or impossible to make out any soft tissue in a radiograph without some radio-opaque coating.
What flavor did you get: Radioisotope Raspberry or Gamma Grape?
Even more interesting is the barium enema for the lower G.I. tract – a lot of fun.
They use barium to see if you’d really drink it. When they leave the room to “take your x-ray” they’re just giggling.
I just had one of these things this last week when I was in having my gall bladder out. Damn sadists! They keep your stomach empty for days, then tell you to drink a liter of this stuff that tastes like chalk with a dash of vanilla. Then you get the joy of the bowel explosions it gives you later. I don’t want to talk about it.
Smeghead: Did you get one of those new fangled 4 holers or the old fashioned 32" incisions? There’s nothing like surgery to make you wish you’d done exactly what your mama said.
Hmmm, I used to do fluoroscopy all the time when I was working as an x-ray tech. Lower GIs were dreaded studies. As well as putting barium in with the enemas, the radiologist also usually pumps a bunch of air into the colon. This is called a dual contrast study. The barium provides the opacity and the air baloons the intestine out for higher resolution of polyps and the like. Occasionally, there would be a patient whose “sphincter fortitude” was not up to par. The result: Every x-ray tech’s worst nightmare, a BE Blowout. Barium, crap, goo, slime, etc… All over everything. Luckily the rad got the worst of it most of the time…
Barium is a bitch to clean up, too. 
Last week I had esophgus(sp?) X-rays using barium. Later that day, after many stomach pains, I let loose in the bathroom. Now, five days later, I can’t get the barium out of the toilet. Why is it still there, how can I get rid of it? Does anyone have any ideas?
I worked in an x-ray department for 12 years. It was interesting to notice that if somebody ever got barium(actually barium sulfate)on their clothes, it wouldn’t come out in the wash. It was like a permanent white stain. I always pondered what the effect would be of adding barium to laundry detergent. Now, granted, you could only use it on whites; but your clothes would be WHITE! Plus you would hav the added benefeit of having protection from radiation.
Which brings me to another point. I’m a creationist. I always would laugh at the radiologists (who were almost always evolutionists) when they put on the lead aprons to go into the fluoroscopy rooms. I would tell them, “Hey, if you evolutionists think that mutations can be beneficial, why don’t you take off your lead apron and blast your gonads with radiation? Your kids might be super-geniuses or something!” They never took me up on my offer… sigh
I was lucky - I got the 4 hole version.
However, there’s a mildly interesting story there. My dad was in a few years back for the same thing. He was on the table and they were getting ready to go when one of the doctors looked at an X-ray and saw what looked like pancreatic cancer. So they decided they needed to go in and do this big drastic operation, removing half his stomach and intestines, etc, etc. They had got as far as opening him up for this, meaning slicing him from side to side (!!) when another doctor came in and proved that it wasn’t cancer after all. So they just took out the gall bladder through this gaping slice. Boy was Dad suprised when he woke up! We called him the Pez dispenser and warned him not to bend over so he wouldn’t pop open.
OK, that was way off the subject. Sorry.
Smeghead, you were lucky! The 4 holer is amazing. Makes the Barium milkshakes look like the dark ages. Even the appendectomy incisions seem shorter and shorter.
ScratchDog, if you’ve still got weird stuff in your toilet, you probably have one of those low-water-usage ones. You need to get a 5-gallon bucket and fill it up with water and, being careful not to strain your back, pour it all in at once. Super flush! Ought to work.
Sycorax is right. A barium milkshake is a walk in the park compared to a barium enema. They strapped me onto this platform as if I were Frankenstein’s Monster, shoved that ugly looking tube up my ass, then turned me left, right, up, down, sideways, upside-down, and on my head. By the time they got done, I could actually taste it by the time they were finished a half-hour later! I had the glowing trots for a week after.
That reminds me of a story I was told in Chemistry. To remove intestinal blockages, they used have the patient swallow one end of a balloon. Then they’d fill it with mercury, tie it off, and let 'er rip. They’d have to tilt them around as you described to get it through the whole system. Of course, sometimes the balloon would burst, giving the patient severe mercury poision, but I guess it took a while to put 2 and 2 together.
OK, I apologize. I don’t know what it is about this thread, but I’m developing a real tendency to get off topic. Bad Smeghead. Bad, bad.