radioactive
…and this time, with no apologies to jimmy page whatsoever. (although you friends from miami are probably smirking at me right now. you can apologize for your smirks any time you want 😉
i’m currently radioactive. see, i had a HIDA Scan. the gastroenterologist is trying to figure out why the hell my abdomen hurts after certain things. like exercise. or eating certain things. and he doesn’t think the teeny tiny gallstone is to blame. i swear, i am going to change my middle name to no food or drink for X hours before the procedure.
(for those of you in the viewing audience keeping track, this will make five, count ’em, five IVs necessary within one month. that’s a personal best:
1) IV for endoscopy
2) IV for IVIG
3) IV for CT scan plus contrast
4) IV for HIDA Scan
and
5) IV for IVIG all over again!
woo hoo! all this scarring, and no IV drugs to show for it. life is unfair 🙁
anyhow, it took nearly two hours to do this one. the last time, the phlebotomist gave up after two tries and brought in another guy to do it. a saint of a guy. and after two tries, he got it in. this time, i told them up front that my veins suck. they brought in the phlebotomist they bring in when they’ve tough veins to tackle — and it happened to be the initial phlebotomist from my previous adventure. she saw the marks, still on my arm, from her adventures two weeks prior. i nearly burst into tears when i heard she was coming. but she just went straight for my hand. and, while it hurt like a mofo, it worked. unfortunately, they had the wrong type of plastic thingy (that would be the technical term) for the IV. she ran to find a good plastic thingy while my blood oozed on my hand. “don’t look at your hand!” she told me before she ran off to find the right thing. and she did. and i lived.
and then i had to basically lie on a table flat for 90 minutes. at one point, the nuclear med guy injected me with stuff that made my stomach feel just awful. parting words: make sure you drink a lot. you’ll be radioactive for a day.
hell. i’m from new jersey. i’m probably radioactive for life.
i saw my regular, normal, everyday primary care doctor last week. i love the guy. he has seen me through shingles, he has seen me through ITP, he has seen me through two successful pregnancies, he has seen me through basically everything over the past 11 or so years. i get a gazillion infections, and i try reallyreally hard not to go on antibiotics because the day may come when they won’t work. and i’ll be VERY screwed, to put it mildly. but i needed to get looked at because i just wasn’t fighting my latest infection too well. he always has such a wonderful sense of humor. i was complaining to him.
doc, i said, i see doctors so often, i feel like i must be one of those munchausen people. a professional patient.
he laughed and patted my arm. nope, he said, you aren’t. the difference, unfortunately, is that you really have the things you have.
shit. i’d rather get attention by winning the nobel prize or something. but no.
i’m just radioactive.