Well, That's Over With

The endoscopy was performed today in the early afternoon. There weren't really any problems, diabetes wise. I took less Lantus last night, and corrected a couple of times in the morning. I think it might have been my fault (calibrations at the wrong times) that the Dex was being kind of inaccurate in the morning, but it was spot on by the time I went in.
I ran blood sugars around 160-210 during the afternoon. The anesthesiologist was kind of disdainful about that. He also asked me about diabetes complications, which I've never had an anesthesiologist ask about before. He was like, "Have your eyes been checked?" and I thought he was talking about in a pre-operative kind of way, but he clarified that he meant, had my eyes been checked for diabetes. I resisted the impulse to tell him that yes, my whole body has diabetes, and instead I told him that my eyes were last checked for retinopathy over the summer and they were fine. And I've had a couple of bad urine samples but not in a row (I actually didn't even think to mention the out of range kidney bloodwork), that I have some loss of feeling of vibrations in my feet (he was disgusted that I didn't know exactly how much), and that as far as I know, my heart is fine.
There were some other interesting moments in the preparation. For instance, I was promised sedation with an anesthesiologist by the GI doc. But the nurse who did intake was under the impression that it would be without an anesthesiologist. She went and checked with the doctor and came back and told me if I wanted an anesthesiologist, it would have to be rescheduled. I prevaricated and then said, eh, let's go ahead sans anesthesiologist, let me tell you all about my diabetes management. Then somebody came in to say that the doctor said my endoscopy would be under general anesthesia. So, okay. Again not what I was told, but fine. We called the person picking me up to let her know that it would be an extra hour because of the general anesthesia.
Getting me ready was a big deal. There were the gowns, which I think I tied on wrong. There were the socks, which I finally got a correct fit for. There was the IV, which took a zillion attempts, a blown vein, a local anesthetic, and pushing past a valve, to get in. There was the taking of the vital signs, in which I was not happy with my weight. There was the rash on my back which hopefully wasn't an allergic reaction but which freaked out the nurses. There was a frantic attempt to find the records from my last endoscopy. There were way too many consent forms, and a local anesthetic for my mouth that came in a spray rather than mouthwash form (BIG improvement, IMHO). And then, there was sleep.

I woke up feeling very dizzy and a little tired, quite oriented and a bit restless. So I started trying to figure out what I was still attached to. They'd apparently put an EKG on me while I was asleep.
I didn't get to speak to medical people as much as I would have liked to after the procedure, but my understanding is that nothing bad happened or was seen while I was under. They did biopsy my stomach and I should hear from the doctor about those samples sometime between Monday and Wednesday of next week.

My friend and I left the hospital around 3 PM and walked around for the next three hours, talking. It was nice. Then we went our separate ways home.

The two affects of the sedation (or anesthesia?) that persisted after leaving the hospital were an extreme sense of dizziness, and difficulty retrieving words. Both are problems that I have some of the time anyways. The dizziness went down to safe levels around 4:15 PM, and the word retrieval became normal before that. I'm not sure what time the procedure began but it was scheduled for noon.

In sum: it was a bigger deal than I expected, I'm kinda wondering if it was really worth it, and I feel fine.