The testing · 11:40pm Sep 7th, 2018
My last twenty-four hours.
Drink too much liquid yesterday as a substitute for food because I wasn't allowed caffeine within 24 hours of the stress test, including chocolate, and my headache made me feel like not cooking fresh, which left me only TV dinners with chocolate in.
Tried to get to bed early. Failed. Repeatedly. Slept terrible all night, including getting up twice to pee.
Despite having peed and sweated out a navigable river overnight, wake up at 6 AM alarm tired, still feeling waterlogged... and thirsty as hell. And, of course hungry, but couldn't eat until after the test.
Go to shower. Find a spider starting to build a web across the ajar bathroom door. "Oh hey! Um... yeah, wasn't quite ready for you yet. Could you come back in about an hour?" Gently relocate spider.
Somehow manage to remember everything I need, including checkbook for the $603 co-pay (the receipt, oddly, reads as "No Cover"), and make the hour and a half drive to Humble in time to pick out a book from Half Price Books to read in the waiting room.
In short order I get the first IV I've ever had since at least infancy. (I'm told I was deathly ill when I was two weeks or two months old, but I don't know from what. My mother is the only one alive who would have been told, and last time I asked she didn't remember.) Learning experience: an IV is like a shot... that never goes away. And three hours, at least, is not enough time for it to not be irritatingly painful.
Wait, read my book about JPL.
Go in for first nuclear scan. Have to raise arms above my head as I lie down on my back. Fortunately the nurses are familiar with people like me who can't lie flat on our backs, and had plenty of pillows to prop up knees and head. Unfortunately, my right shoulder tendons (and before long all the tendons in my right arm) didn't like the position, and by the time the lying-still was done, I was in serious almost-ready-to-scream pain.
Then, when I'm allowed to lower my arm, I discover (a) the bench has no place for my arm to rest, and (b) swinging my arm back when lying down is actually more painful than reaching up was.
Stress test time. I'm able to get enough air and stamina for uphill treadmill walking, but my right leg begins cramping after about seven minutes, before I reach the target heart rate. So I have to have the medicated test instead, i. e. "Hey, let's check to see if you're going to have a heart attack by making you feel like you ARE having a heart attack!" Worst symptom: the sensation of being outside in July at 1 PM in southern Arizona without a hat (which I have done, once- ONCE) while actually lying on an exam table in a well air-conditioned room.
"Stress test's over. Here, have some caffeine while you wait for the radioisotope booster shot to circulate." Um. Okaaaaay?
"Would you like some crackers or something as a snack while you wait?" Can't. The Dr. Pepper she gave me is all foam, and I can't burp. I can just barely take small sips of liquid air. Food is temporarily out of the question.
"Done with the IV now." Note: when they mail you all those instructions for "do this" and "don't do that", how about adding, "Shave your arms before coming in"? OW.
More waiting, more reading. I get called in for the next nuclear scan right about the point that Congress threatens to defund JPL just as they're gearing up for the Voyager missions.
Pillows slightly better placed for the arm, but still hurts.
"Your ultrasound is scheduled for 1 PM, but let's see if we can get you in early." Bless you.
If I don't have bruises on my left chest from the ultrasound probe, it's not because the technician didn't push hard enough.
Most worrisome part of the test: the parts where she takes audio of various parts of my heart beating. "That sounds okay... that's a little weird, not so much 'b-dump b-dump' as 'tick-tock-tick-tock'... WAIT A MINUTE THAT HAD LESS RHYTHM THAN THE TIME I TRIED TO PLAY THE DRUMS oh wait that's normal... NO IT'S NOT yes it is..."
And I don't find out what any of it means until Tuesday.
Take care of a couple errands, buy flea and mite dope (not both in one, nor the kind recommended by others, wasn't on the shelf), come home, prepare to cook.
Hope I don't have to do this crap again any time soon.
Back when I first started giving blood to the Red Cross, they used this *tape* of great stickyness. A big X over the hose, and one a little higher.
I'm a hairy person, at least on the arms.
You could tell exactly where they had put the tape up to two weeks later. Those were the not-hairy stripes.
They used to say "That didn't hurt, did it?" I'd respond, "You haven't taken the tape off yet."
Now they use vet wrap. Far better. Less screaming.
*hugs*
Right. Now seems a good time to buy something form your store. Will be looking it over this weekend.
Well, here's hoping you get relatively good news on Tuesday.