Tuesday, May 7, 2013

My Sexy Medical Test



Well I had my CAT scan last Tuesday.  It went well.  Too bad they don't take you early if you show up early though, since Hubs drove me and he arrives EARLY everywhere he goes.
Drives me nuts sometimes......

I have a touch of claustrophobia but I didn't feel any anxiety when they slid me into that machine.
Piece.
Of.
Cake.

They snapped pictures and then were going to inject a contrast and afterwards take some more pictures.
The contrast agent gets into your system via an IV line.
IVs.
These are always much fun with me, finding an acceptable vein near the skin surface of my arm and keeping an IV needle in it for any length of time.
I have "Houdini" veins.....now you see them, now you don't.
Also, I get really bad black and blue marks from IVs that take forever to disappear.
Here's my arm just this morning, a week after having this latest IV needle inserted.....



Back to the story......The technician who prepped me found a vein quickly and accessed it.
But after the first set of photos, when they injected the contrast, the needle came loose and the sticky liquid instead of shooting through my veins, shot into my ear, in my hair and all over the pillow.
What a mess!
Afraid to move I was frantically waving my fingers on my other hand trying to get someone in the control room's attention.
When they realized something wasn't right and came to fix the problem(ram the needle around in my arm looking for the vein again), it took about 20 more minutes before the IV was ready to function properly.

The technicians had said that when they inject the contrast you'll feel a warmth in your chest and you may get warm because of the iodine in the solution.
Well, of course I am weird, you all know that, so after I got that warmth in the chest sensation, my nether regions started tingling and heated up like nobody's business.
It was better than any "adult warming gel" for "her enjoyment" advertised on tv.
I know this is TMI and many of you are x-ing out of this page about now but I must say I rather enjoyed this part of the program and I am looking forward to any and all CAT scans in my future.
And my advise is, that if you ever have a CAT scan insist on one with contrast. ;-)

So the doc was checking for Pulmonary Embolisms(aka blood clots in the lungs) to rule them out.
Thankfully that was all clear.  Although it's been a month since I went to the hospital in crisis and I'm pretty sure if I had had a PE, it would have broken loose and killed me loooong before I had this test.

The images did come back showing a nodule on one of my lungs.  It is very small.  Now these can be either cancerous or not, so there is concern depending on what your risk level is.  I am not low risk and I'm not high risk for one of these to grow into something bad.  Because of being exposed to secondhand smoke from my SAHM as a child and having asthma, I have a moderate risk of this thing growing and changing.  So the plan is to keep an eye on it and have another scan in 6 months.

Oh goody!
Can't wait.....and I am serious.
The next time though I'll insist the technicians buy me dinner first.   ;-)

Sluggy

7 comments:

  1. I'm thinking that I need a CAT scan. Its probably cheaper to buy KY with a coupon though.

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  2. Oh yeah and you are crazy! How could I forget to tell you that!

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  3. I've always heard that the contrast makes you feel like you have to pee. I guess that would be kind of like having warm nether regions.

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  4. At my cat scan over a year ago, I was told I would feel like I had to pee. That never happened. I always miss all the fun. I had to drink a quart of something for the contrast.

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  5. Oh wow... I guess I'll stick with KY too.

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  6. Bahahahaha. Glad the tests didn't reveal anything wrong.

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  7. Nice Post. Thank you so much for sharing with us.
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    ReplyDelete

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