Standardized Test Practice

Tests, tests, and more tests. It’s been over a week since I had these tests, but I realized something about that today. It least was a time when I felt like I was DOING something towards dealing/treating/whatever. The last week or so, I’ve been playing the waiting game. There is kind of a plan of attack, but it’s about getting all the ducks in a row to get it started.

The tests…the CT scan was first. It was scheduled for 9am, but I had to be there at 7:30am. If you have ever had a scheduled CT scan, you probably know why. You get 2 bottles of something-barium-with-berry-flavor-something or other. It was, well, not as filling as I thought it should be. If I had the equivalent of that in the form of a chocolate milkshake (from Coldstone made with cake batter ice cream), I would have been STUFFED. But within an hour (they give you an hour and a half), I had this stuff downed. Patty and I played a game…OK, it wasn’t really that fun of a game, but she gave me a time deadline to drink part of the cup’s worth. It worked until the receptionist was confused about what test I was there for and yelled at me to STOP DRINKING. After a minor consultation (wherein the receptionist bitched and moaned about how Maurine had failed to cancel something else), I was back to drinking and on track for the 9am scan.

And no CT scan is complete without an injection. Wow, I can’t remember what this injection was, but I do remember it was NOT the radioactive injection (that comes later). Apparently it was some other contrast agent—all running through me making me HOT from the inside out. The tech warned me about that, with the little note that the warmth would travel EVERYWHERE, wherein it would make me feel as though I had wet my pants. “You won’t,” she declared. Whew. I hadn’t brought a change of clothes. Once in the unit and after watching the thing spin loudly and having to hold my breath on the command of a computer-generated voice, it was over. OK, that was easy enough. By the way, that something-barium-with-berry-flavor-something really didn’t taste like anything, so if you ever need to drink it, don’t be afraid.

MRI…BREAST MRI…um, instead of lying on my back in the MRI tube (which I thought was going to happen, so I took a little Xanex to help me through that—no need for panic here!), I had to lay down face first, with my girls appropriately placed in 2 squared areas. Um, they ain’t square. And there was PLENTY of room there. My face was placed in a cradle similar to that on a massage table, and holy cow, there was a mirror down there. With the mirror in place, I could just look OUT of the tube, without having any perspective as to how tight that tube was. Nice—although a little TV or something would have been better. I was hooked up again to receive another injection of something or other (I think this time it was gallium). When it was injected, little syringes (that I could see thanks to that little mirror—see, a TV would have been better) started to move down, slowly pushing that gallium in. It kind of reminded me of some movie where there was an execution scene. OK, perhaps that was the Xanex talking. Despite the fact that I was given no music and the ear plugs were barely in place, I managed through the knocking and pinging of the MRI.

After a night’s slumber aided by the presence of Xanex in my system (not to mention barium and several other contrast dyes), I headed in again for another 7:30am check-in time for a bone scan. In terms of my effort, this was by far the easiest. Checked in, got injected with radioactivity (for those of you keeping count, that’s injection #3, technium-99), and headed to the cafeteria. Apparently it takes up to 3 hours for the radioactivity to stick where it’s supposed to—basically bones (anything with a lot of calcium). Bone scans are GREAT at detecting lots of things about bones—including hairline fractions and the like. Very sensitive, so if anything abnormal was on my bones, it would find it. Patty and I hung out at the hospital—cafeteria, gift shop, lobby—then headed back for the scan. The scan itself was nothing. This scanner was just a moving table with “readers” above and below me—not a tube, like the MRI. It took a mere 15 minutes to drag my body through the reader so the computer could pick up the radioactivity that stuck to my bones. The excess was supposed to leave via my bladder, but apparently I hadn’t quite emptied it. I thought I had, but as I said, the scanner is a wee bit sensitive…