“Melanie, we’ll take you right here”. I look up to see a nurse in blue scrubs smiling next to an open door. I collect my things and stand, shaking slightly. I walk hesitantly to the door and have a seat on the exam table. She looks at me, cocks her head to the side and turns to look at my mom. “Do you know why you’re here?”, how could I not? I nodded ignoring how stupid the question is. She starts to go deeper into the details of my procedure, outlining everything I read in the blue packet. “You’ll be under anesthesia and you won't feel the tube going down your throat, into your stomach and small intestine” she says it with a smile, trying to make it seem fun. I nod and look down at the ugly tiled floor. She instructs me to take off my shoes and weighs me and measures my height. We are escorted back to the waiting room. I survey the people around me supposedly having the same procedure as me. “It’ll just be a few minutes then we’ll take you to the prep room” the nurse says before closing the door with a cheesy smile.

A different nurse appears at the entry of the waiting room she calls out three names, mine included. I stand and walk towards where she stands in front of a huge set of double doors. She hits a blue button with her fist and the doors open with a creak. “To the elevator” she says, with yet another cheesy smile. When we arrive in the prep rooms the medical smell of IV’s and sanitizer is almost overpowering. Horrid pink curtains substitute as makeshift walls separating hospital beds with metal sides. I’m led through a maze of curtains and nurses running around to my “room”.  Almost immediately after I sit down a lady in scrubs sits uncomfortably close to me on the bed. “Hi im your nurse lets get you into some hospital pajamas” she says with a wink. I look at my mom and give her a “help me” look and follow the lady to the cabinet. She smiles down kindly at me and opens up a cabinet. She takes down a pair of dark blue pants and the ugliest gown i've ever seen and lastly a pair of grippy socks. She leads me to a bathroom, not giving me any instruction then leaves. I look around the bathroom totally confused.   I decide to get dressed in the horrific hospital attire. The pants are gigantic I could have easily fit the entire population of Berlin in there with me. This has got to be a joke. With a shudder I move to the hospital gown, colored a light blue with brown and yellow stripes. It was easily the ugliest thing ive ever seen. After completing the look with a pair of blue grippy socks I peer out into the hallway. Nobody is around, the hospital for an instant feels completely empty. I look down various corridors, none looking familiar. “There you are” a stranger dressed in scrubs says. “Come on let’s go back” she shrugs toward the ugly corridor where my “room” is located.

The nurse sits, once again uncomfortably close to me as she tells me the plan. “Pretty soon you’re going to get an IV, we just hook it up to your arm and hang out until its time to get the procedure” she says it with a smile as if she were telling me I was going on vacation. I resist the strong urge to roll my eyes, instead I nod and look at my slippers. Later she comes in with a pink colored container filled with needles and sterile wipes. My heart starts beating out of my chest and I feel anxiety building up inside me ramming against my rib cage. She puts the needle into my right arm. I wince as the pinch lasts for a few seconds then watch as she tapes down the iv. I feel totally helpless like no super hero could ever save me. And I start to think about what’s gonna happen to me if the results of the endoscopy show celiac disease. Images of pizza and cake fly across my mind and I feel tears welling up in the corners of my eyes and my bottom lip   start to tremble like the ground before an earthquake.
I look up from my hands, which are folded together neatly and sweating like crazy when the nurse comes in. “Okay let’s go” she says. She comes to my side and raises the other bar, preventing me from escaping. I feel trapped and my heart beats like a bass drum against my chest as I realise its time. She pushes me through a set of doors and wheels me backwards into the room. The room is filled with monitors and tubes and tons of medical equipment that looks deadly. Suddenly Im surrounded by a few familiar faces, the anesthesiologist, the doctor and one of the nurses. They pull a monitor around front of me. The monitor was like a trigger and my emotions broke loose. They started lowering my head and setting up the equipment and I started sobbing. The doctors reassured me I would be ok. But right then I did not want a tube down my throat and into my stomach, I wanted so badly to leave that awful room filled with the stench of fear. The nurse takes my wrist and reads off the information on it “Melanie Bosco, date of birth : April 28th 2001, pin number 7383029384773, procedure date Tuesday December 9th”  The doctor nods and smiles at me, “yep you’re the right Melanie.” She nods at the anesthesiologist “Lets start.” I started sobbing harder and the anesthesiologist took my arm with the needle in it, while instructing me to take deep breaths. “Deep breaths Melanie” he says trying desperately to calm me down. “Running it now” he says. Within seconds my face starts to burn and I take a look at the giant red clock in front of my bed catching the time; 10:50. I don’t remember closing my eyes.  

When I wake my stomach hurts and I have an awful mechanical taste in my mouth. Im in a different “room” than I was in before, an altogether different section. There was yet a different nurse hovering over me “Oh god she’s awake I was getting worried” the nurse says. “Ill let your stats run for a second” she says, like I know what that means. I rest my head back down and for a second I can feel where the tube had gone I felt very dislodged. The nurse comes over after a minute and while she rips off all my tubes and stickers that appeared while I was unconscious. This process takes quite awhile due to the fact there’s about twenty things attached to me. I look at my mom “what did the doctor say” I ask, my voice rough from whatever they sprayed in my mouth. I can tell she’s hiding something by the way she looks at me. “You have celiac disease, your intestine is damaged and as of today you start a lifelong gluten free diet”