Friday was my morning of being scanned.
I
had to be at Addenbrookes for 8:30 so I could drink a pint or so of
contrast medium slowly over the hour before my scan. Contrast medium
tastes a bit like aniseed. I had mine with blackcurrant cordial so it
wasn't taste too bad. The spending an hour sipping a drink passed a lot
quicker than you'd think thanks to the wonders of the i-pod and the BBC
Radio 4 "Comedy of the Week" podcast.
The scan itself wasn't too
bad. The machine is fairly quiet and I just had to lie on my back
which is a lot more comfortable than some positions. The bit I didn't
like was the injection of a different contrast medium. Wow does that
burn. It felt like my body was on fire, especially my groin - which was
not good combined with the large volume of liquid they'd had me drink.
The real burning feeling passed fairly quickly but the hot flush hung
around for a while and hand me feeling decidedly iffy. On the plus side
I remembered to tell them I was having an MRI scan straight afterwards
so they made sure the cannula was in a suitable place to be reused for
the second scan.
The MRI wasn't as bad this time. I was a bit
surprised when they taped a couple of cod liver oil capsules to my hand
beforehand but they explained that fat shows up really well on the scans
so the capsules work as shiny beacons to highlight where the scar is on
my hand. I though that was kind of cool, I love the low-tech
simplicity of the practise :)
They used lots of foam to hold my
arm and hand in position and the better support meant not as much pain
in my shoulder. This machine doesn't have music so I had earplugs
instead which is a huge improvement over Mull Of Kintrye on stutter.
Even with earplugs it is stupidly loud and very thumpy and the resulting
headache was impressive in it's thudding and thumping.
I must
remember that if I have to have another one and take the day off work,
because I don't think I was much use to anyone when I got in. The
headache has faded today but is still there, and my hand is hurting lots
more than usual from having been kept still for half an hour.
I
now have 3 weeks to wait before I get the results. It's amazing how
long three weeks can feel. My darling daughter obviously knows because
there was a lovely bunch of flowers waiting for me when I got home,
beautiful white roses. That was a lovely mood booster and just what I
needed
