Throw Exception From AJAX Call

[eluser]craigkoster[/eluser]
OK...figured out part of the problem is that I have xdebug running which takes all error messages and formats them nicely via HTML. I removed the xdebug module but my calls to $ex->getMessage() still returns:

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Exception' with message 'this is a test' in /[path]:28 Stack trace: #0 [internal function]: Ajax->create_account() #1 /[path]CodeIgniter.php(232): call_user_func_array(Array, Array) #2 /[path]index.php(115): require_once('/[path]) #3 {main} thrown in /[path]/ajax.php on line 28

Is there no way to just get the 'this is a test' part of the message?