Testing Times
Big day yesterday. The night before I went to stay at some friends', who live only a 20 or 30-minute walk from the hospital, instead of an or or so by a couple of buses from where I'm staying now. So we talked & so forth in the evening to keep me from worrying too much, made sure I had a good dinner, then didn't eat after when I had to start my fast, and they made sure I woke up in time.

The first appointment was for 8:30 in the morning, with the last to start about 2:00 in the afternoon, and a series between back and forth in the medical centre for pathology and X-rays and nuclear scans, blah, blah, blah. As usual my veins were unco-operative and tricky to work with, so my hands and arms ended up patched all over with cotton wool and tape or bandaids. That's one of the most offputting and difficult things, just relaxing and holding still while someone is probing around inside you with a needle trying to thread it into a vessel, or even find one. But they weren't too bad at it, even around the site of the biopsy (he took four cores, I think) isn't much bruised.

The scans and X-rays are easier, and can be almost relaxing (except for mammograms, which are awkward and uncomfortable, but bearable). You are often laid down, they give you supports if you need to be on your side, and the machines move over you, or move the table you're on into or through the detectors. For some reason, the light levels are often fairly low too. It might be more difficult if you are feeling sick or in pain, but I'm not feeling too bad at the moment. I've been practicing some kinds of simple meditation and/or visualization for these situations. And I was better prepared for some of the possible effects of the chemicals, which caused a disaster on my way home a couple of years back from the last CT scan.

Might write a bit more about things later, but I'm still feeling a touch poorly.

Something to chew on: The Median Isn't the Message, by Stephen Jay Gould
www.cancerguide.org/median_not_msg.html
[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 3/24/2006 09:27:00 pm