It’s not that it tastes bad… well, there’s that… but after I drank 450 mL of it I suddenly felt very nauseous, light headed, and queasy. Of course, I think that’s what it’s supposed to do, but… ick.
For those of you who’ve never had it, pray you never have to. It’s like orange flavored milk, with the same consistency.
Why can’t CT scan prep stuff taste GOOD?
I can’t believe I have to drink more of it in 12 hours. Ugh.
Ah yes, the ever popular upper G.I. series. I had my first when I was five years old and diagnosed with a full blown ulcer then later when I was 12 or 13. At least with the lower G.I. you don’t have to taste it but I can’t say I liked it any better. At least yours was flavored. [crotchety old man]back in my day we’d a been happy to have orange flavored barium[/COM]
Indeed… the entire GI series does not sound the least bit pleasant. I believe my schedule for tomorrow includes a CT scan, an MRI, as well as an upper GI. I can only hope the lower GI portion isn’t included. 
I’ve had more than my share of “Barium milkshakes” as a yout’ (childhood accident and all). As I recall, they were pretty…nasty, actually. It wasn’t so much like orange-flavored milk…more like mercury-flavored milk. At least, as I imagine mercury-flavored milk would taste. Or maybe closer to milk-flavored mercury. Awful aftertaste just the same.
I hope everything goes well for you, Civil Defense. That sounds like a whole lot of pretty unpleasant things planned for tomorrow - I hope the ultimate outcome is good news.
Just grit your teeth (where it doesn’t interfere with the imaging) and keep on being thankful it’s not a lower GI or, come to think of it, a sigmoidoscopy.
Thanks-- I, however, really hope the outcome indicates some treatable problem. After all the testing I’ve undergone in the past few months with no results, it’s about time they found out what’s wrong. :<
The sigmoidoscopy wasn’t so bad-- he actually gave me a bit of local anesthesia for it. The lower GI is soon to follow, I fear, if nothing is found. 
Well, on that note, I’m off -=)
One thing about the Upper GI that my doctor didn’t tell me (maybe I should have been able to figure this out on my own) is that Barium isn’t, um, absorbed by the body so it was quite a shock to me after the procedure when it, well, without getting into TMI, let’s just say it doesn’t change on its way out of your body.
For me the worst part of the Upper GI was the fizzy stuff they gave me to drink before they gave me the barium. It burned my throat, chest and stomach as well as making my eyes water. After that the barium was almost soothing … actually I didn’t mind it much at first, but then they watered it down with warm tap water. That’s when it got pretty gross.
As for Lower GIs – they are the absolute WORST. Compared to a Lower, an Upper GI is a walk in a park on a gorgeous spring day. And Barium is downright delicious compared to the castor oil they make you drink the day before the Lower GI. I won’t go into the other torture they make you go through as that will fall in the TMI category as well. I hope that you don’t have to go through it. :: shudders at the memory ::
I hope everything turns out alright for you.
I recently had a barium swallow for an x-ray and damn did that stuff mess me up. I liked the fizzy stuff though. Tasted like pop rocks. Here’s the part that really made me feel light-headed and nauseous. In case anyone doesn’t know, the point of the test (at least for me) was to see how you swallow stuff and such, and regular food won’t show up on the x-ray. Of course, the whole reason I was at the doctor’s in the first place was because I was having problems swallowing. You know that doctor’s “hmmmmm” that signals to everyone else “Uh-oh”? That was me. The stuff wasn’t going down. Doctor actually told me not to drink any more of the stuff. An endoscopy and esophageal menometry (I think I spelled that right. This is terrible. Never have this. They stick a 60 centimeter plastic electronic thing through your nose and down your throat and you can’t be sedated for it because they need you to swallow and it SUCKS.) it turns out I have achalasia, where the muscle at the top of your stomach doesn’t open right. Rare but treatable (by surgery). Actually I think Kurt Cobain might have had this, but he never got it checked out by a doctor since he was afraid. Either he had this or a really bad ulcer.
Ehhh. You just had to go and remind me of the upper G.I. I had done when I was 11. They don’t let you drink or eat anything at midnight before that happens. So I was dying for a drink of water and they hand me the Barium Sulfate it looks absolutely nasty and tasted about 10 times worse. I took one drink and was like BLAH! Geesh one of the reasons why I hate hospitals.