Breath test results... or not.

A little over a week ago, a wrote about my trip home for my breath test for SIBO.  Well, I didn't say anything at the time because I wanted to wait to talk to my doctor, but the results for that test are instant, so we were able to keep track of my results throughout the entire test.

Prior to the test, the nurse told me that a 10 was considered positive.  Basically, if you have SIBO, the bacteria that's supposed to only be in your large intestine is also in your small intestine, and when glucose comes into contact with that bacteria, hydrogen is produced.  Therefor, hydrogen is only supposed to be in your large intestine during the test and shouldn't show up in the breath test except for when the little flap between the small and large intestine opens and lets a little of it out.  In other words - a normal test result should have one peak, which is when the flap opens, and apparently it should be lower than a 10.  Or at least that's what I understood (I'm no doctor!).

My results were something like: 0,0,1,5,1,10.  Yeah... that's a 10!  The nurse was completely surprised because we weren't expecting it to shoot back up after it went back down to 1, and she went out to tell my doctor, but he was at his other office that day, so she said he'd call me about the test results.  We were really excited and surprised, because, well... we were pretty sure it was positive!  I decided not to tell anyone right away though, because I wanted to wait until I heard from my doctor... I also didn't want to get too excited until I understood what the results actually meant.  But, a few days went by and we didn't hear anything (it turns out that they mail test results unless it's something urgent... I had forgotten all about that), so my dad talked to another nurse who was there... and she said the results looked negative to her!  She said that some people react differently to it, even if they don't have the syndrome.  That's the last we've heard, and I'm assuming my doctor doesn't think it's positive either because he didn't call us.  I've definitely been praying that God will direct them as they interpret it though!  It gets me nervous when results are this confusing...

The test actually is really hard to interpret, so I'm not annoyed with the nurses.  But, I'm very glad that I didn't let myself get too excited about the "positive" results!