Hello everyone!
Well, my first experience with the ‘giant doughnut’, the CT scanner, is now behind me. Admittedly, it is the only doughnut in my life that I haven’t been entirely overjoyed to be offered. But it was still actually quite a fascinating role reversal, being ‘eaten’ by one. It was almost peaceful. So for anyone who has not yet had a CT scan, I would like to reassure you: you will be fine.
Immediately beforehand, I did get in a few questions, but not necessarily the right ones. Apparently, the dye that goes into the body is disappointingly clear-coloured. For some reason, I had imagined it to be a wonderful blue. With hindsight, thank goodness it is not blue, because frankly I would like to keep desirable side effects to an absolute minimum (and having blue skin would be on that list).
I was told that the dye would give a temporary but sudden feeling of heat. This did happen. For me, it felt like the ‘glow’ which follows a truly mortifying situation, shortly before wishing the ground might swallow me up. Then it was mentioned that another effect of the dye is that I would feel as if I was going to wet myself! Well, there was my absolute guarantee that I was going to get at least one surge of heat. Again for anyone who may be worrying about this aspect: you are not going to wet yourself.
The staff were so kind. It is hard to say how many of them there were, as I chose to keep my eyes shut throughout most of the process. There seemed to be 2 radiologists and 2 more medical staff in a separate control room. It felt a bit like I was in an odd recording studio. I glimpsed the 2 staff in the control room smiling very encouraging at me. The voice of one of them I could hear through speakers whilst in the CT scanner, kindly reminding me to “breathe in” and then (fortunately, in my case) to “breathe out again”.
Anyway, I am waiting for the results of the CT scan. That’s the difficult part. Or perhaps not the waiting itself (I am not an impatient person) but discovering the results. Well, this is the thing with doughnuts, CT scanners included: contact with them is entertaining but afterwards there’s always some regret. Still, there's always the joy of more doughnuts to come too.
