I had my ct scan today, a tedious process. First I had to fast, which is always a joy, then drive myself downtown and park (for free, the place I go is nice enough to validate your parking), sign in, sit down, wait 15 to 30 minutes for your name to be called, get up, get paperwork, sit down, fill out paperwork, get up, hand paperwork in, sit down, wait to be called back to go in. Then it's drink 2 full bottles of banana flavored barium and sit and wait an hour for it to do it's thing. Luckily the waiting area is near the restroom (which you need after drinking two bottles of barium) but they are also in the midst of a huge construction project so the waiting area is a dump at the moment and it was FREEZING cold for some reason. For most of the hour I was sitting there by myself as everyone else seemed to be having scans which didn't require them to drink barium. Okay, then wait to be called, go in to the changing room, take off my clothes and put on the gowns (one with the opening facing the back and another with the opening facing the front), sit down and wait for a short bit to be called again, go back to the ct room, sit and wait for a bit till they are ready for me to lay on the table, get a vein accessed (such fun, especially when I've been fasting, they end up using my hand), start the scan, hold your breath, go in and out and in and out of the machine, tech comes back in and they inject the dye, she leaves, feel warm going from my throat down through my groin and get metallic taste in mouth, go in and out of the machine and tech comes back in and says all done, go back to changing room, put on clothes, go to front desk, get parking validated, go to parking garage, etc. You get the idea. I was there about 2 hours, which is shorter than when I went for my last PET/CT when I was there for what seemed like forever (3, 3 1/2 hours? I can't remember exactly, thankfully).
I get to go back tomorrow and have the MRI of my back done. I don't have to fast or drink barium but that test takes a lot longer in the machine. Believe it or not this will be my first MRI. I have had too many ct scans to count (I've been having one or two a year since 1998) and have had 3 PET/CT scans but never an MRI. So, a new experience, yippee!
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4 comments:
good luck with the MRI today. And I bet you don't like the taste of banana any more.
Thanks, I'll be leaving for it shortly. The barium tastes so far from a real banana flavor (or anything else) that it's icky taste effects are pretty much limited to barium drinking. Believe it or not I think the banana flavor is the "good" flavor. I can barely stomach the orange flavor, it's really bad. I think I might have had a raspberry flavor once somewhere but for the most part the places I go for scans only have orange and banana. Now they really need to get together with some place like Starbucks and have some kind of mocha frappacino flavor :-)
What does the warm feeling in your throat come from? Is it from the dye? Or something is "warming up" the barium that you drank earlier? Sounds odd...
Tricia, it's from the dye. Once they inject the dye you can feel it go all over your body (torso really, I don't feel it in my arms and legs or head). The two places that feel it most are the throat and the groin. The first time I got it (many moons ago with my first cancer) they warned me that I would feel this warmth and said it might feel like I had to urinate, but that it was just the dye. Definitely a weird feeling and even though I've had many of these scans it's still something I have to "talk" myself through as it happens. It's momentary and passes fairly quickly thankfully.
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