Marathon Scan Day

Time for my annual scans, twelve months post chemotherapy.  It is going to be a long day at the Cedar's Campus.  Arrival time: 8am.

First stop is the new Heart Institute Pavillion for yet another echocardiogram and ekg.  The technician remembers me from July.  I get through this test without any problem.  The ekg technician comes in afterwards and takes care of this test rather quickly.  Now I have some time to kill before my next appointment.  I go in search of food.  For my next round of scans I cannot eat or drink anything after 10:30am and will not be able to eat again until about 5pm.  I find myself a nice breakfast; eggs, chicken sausage, potatoes, and toast.  Good to go.

Next stop, Imaging Center.  First up is the injection for bone scan, she also puts in an IV port for the afternoon procedures.  This one goes in so much more nicely than the last time.  It probably helps that I have also had a couple of Ativan.

Southpaw thinks she did a nice job.

This takes only a few minutes and I am off to the CT scan area to drink the "smoothie".

Southpaw shares smoothie.

After we drink up it is off to the mammogram area.  I only have to have my right side done, so I am anticipating no real problems.  I get three images done and then wait for the doctor to look at them.  He wants to see some more images, so the technician does four more images.  So, that is a total of seven boob squishing pictures.  They want me to wait again for the doctor to look at these images.  I inform them that I need to go to my CT scan appointment.  They let me go, but I have to come back to them when I am finished with all of my other scans.  I get to the CT area and they make me drink a baby "smoothie" because too much time has passed.

Banana, not so bad.

I make it through the CT scanning without any issues.  Now it is over to the bone scan area again.  The technician is ready and waiting for me.  She gets me all secured into the machine, they strap you in nice and snug to keep you still.  And off we go.  This room is dark and cool.  The scan takes about thirty minutes.  I am exhausted by this time.  I fell asleep about five minutes into it.  A nice little cat nap.  I wake up when the technician comes back into the room at the end of the scan.  All went well, so off I go back to the mammogram area.  The nurse informs me that the doctor would like to have an ultra sound done.  So down the hall we go to the ultra sound room.  This test takes about twenty minutes and then I have to wait for the doctor to look at the images.

Southpaw the Ultra Sound Tech

The ultra sound looks fine and they schedule me for another mammogram in six months.  My day is now complete, nine and a half hours later.  No treat today, I just want to go home and go to sleep.