9/14/22

Today is Wednesday.  And, yes, I had to look it up.  Being retired is great.  I had a lung scan yesterday.  I'd never had one of those before and it was interesting.  They said there would be no IV and it would be quick.  Well, they were wrong.  Apparently the chick scheduling this stuff doesn't know squat about this procedure.  I'm not saying she was ignorant, she just had really bad luck when it came to thinking.  I'm always a bit disappointed when liar's pants don't actually catch on fire.  I showed up at the hospital and the first thing they did was start an IV.  The guy said usually I'd already have one in because he does mostly in-patients.  I'm the odd one.  He was the best person I ever had to start one.  I hardly felt a thing, but the blood thinners are functioning at the top of their game.  I squirted blood everywhere.  After he got the IV in, he said he needed to 'clean up the crime scene'.  That made me laugh.  He got the IV in, but didn't give me anything.  We went into another room and I laid down on the skinniest 'table' possible to fit a human body on.  After I was prone, he began injecting the stuff.  He said I had to be flat before injection because it 'pools', and he wanted it to pool in my lungs.  Gee, that sounds great....  It's got particles in it that the scanner will be able to see.  I raised both arms above my head and miraculously stayed on the skinny table.  This is the nuclear medicine department, so, of course I asked him if I'd glow in the dark.  He said yes.  That was reassuring, also....  But, wait!  There's more!  He said it would stay in my system and decay in my lungs.  Holy cow.  Really?  Yep.  So, I'm in this machine that looks like a tinier version of an MRI and the thing rotates around my body while I lie still.  15 minutes later, he takes the IV out and has to clean up another 'crime scene'.  He said the stuff he put in me was tech99M or something like that.  Jessica, he said you'd know what it was since you're a nuclear engineer.  Next, they took me down for a chest x-ray.  No one mentioned this at time of booking, either, so that was a surprise.  After an hour, I walked out the door, feeling a bit funny.  The next 3-4 hours were weird.  I didn't feel right.  I ran a few errands, had lunch with a friend, then came home and fell asleep in my recliner.  I felt better later in the afternoon and I'm OK now.  I don't know if the hospital visit was the cause, or I had something else going on, but it's gone and I'm glad.  The results hit my chart that afternoon and I didn't see anything screwy on either test, so I'm gonna consider the embolisms gone.  I go see my oncologist on Monday afternoon and I'm sure she'll explain everything then.

Remember:  Laughter is the best medicine.  However, if you laugh for no reason, you made need medicine.