From My Mind to....

Life's Now a Series of Tests

Yesterday I had a CT scan of my abdomen in order for the doctor to compare my before-surgery scan done on 13 March with my current status after surgery. That meeting will take place next Thursday.

I came out of the scan more confused about the reason for the scan. If the doctors want an apples-to-apples comparison, shouldn't I have had the same kind of scan? Instead, this time I was required to drink a Barium smoothie, ostensibly to enhance the scanning procedure. By the way, the powers that be may call that drink a 'smoothie' in an effort to make it more palatable. But they failed.

Some finer points about drinking the smoothie. I'm supposed to drink it at least four hours before my scan, which they were 45 minutes late in doing. If one's scan is in the afternoon, you drink the mix in the morning; if the scan is in the morning, you drink it the night before. And the instructions tell you to drink the smoothie at room temperature. I drank mine about six hours before.

My first scan in March did not require the Barium smoothie--just an IV port for some meds that were supposed to enhance the images. So I figured no IV port this time. I was wrong. I got both. Did I mention I really hate needles?

And not only did I have to take the smoothie once, but they made me drink another one while they were installing my IV port. Apparently, after six hours most of the smoothie was in my colon; they wanted something a bit more upper-level for scanning purposes. I wondered what happens to the poor souls who drink it the night before. Oh, and the second smoothie came right out of the refrigerator, which was much more palatable to drink. Coulda told me that before.

Before I left, on the advice of a good friend who's undergoing cancer treatments, I got copies of all the image testing I've had to date on a CD. I knew my laptop didn't have a CD player, but I thought my wife's older laptop did. Wrong. Guess I'll have to hook up my old desktop PC to look at the images.

Something to do after I write my Noticing Newbies newsletter this afternoon.

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