The Month of Medical Miracles
I had my ultrasound and x-ray as scheduled. The x-ray was first, and I stretched out on a hard not-metal table under a huge machine which looked like it belonged in a science fiction movie. The x-ray tech positioned me, then ran behind a large room-sized shield to zap each picture. Position my Gumby body, scurry, "hold your breath," zap, "breathe." Then she'd come take the x-ray plate out of the table and put it into a digital what-not on the side of the room. A few clunks and a whirr and my bones appeared on the monitor. Guess what? I have hips!
And vertebrae. I'm sure she had a set number of them to show, and she stood there, counting my vertebrae. One, two, three, four... as her finger touched each one on the monitor. When she finished counting I asked if I had them all.
"What?" she replied cleverly.
"Never mind."
Then ultrasound, where I had more how-to-breathe instructions. "Hold your breath," the ultrasound tech said, as she rubbed something that looked like an old-style vibrator across my belly. "Breathe," she said, as she moved that thing to another place. And again. And again. And finally she was done. She pulled the vibrator head off my skin, switched off her machine, and said, "Hold your... oops. Breathe normally."
The behind-the-counter tech smiled at me as I left. "Your doctor should have these results in about three days." I went on to work, and when I got there I wrote down in my planner to call my doctor in three days.
I didn't have to. When I got home from work, I had a call from the doctor's office. "Please come in and see the doctor." Ack. So I went. They'd gotten the results back from the ultrasound (already?? talk about same-day-service!) and there was a possibility of a mass in my liver. The next step was having a CT scan done. That, of course, requires insurance approval, so we waited.
Each day I called, only to be told "No approval yet." Finally I decided to skip days and wait a couple between calls. On the 10th, they said they had approval. So I called the CT scan place, and they said, "We have an opening tomorrow." What is it with me and tomorrows?
Surprisingly, it was the same spot that did the ultrasound. On the 11th, I had the CT scan and today I got the results.
The doctor says I appear normal. (He doesn't know me very well, does he?)
So the momentary apprehension is over and I'm back to the grind. However, my back still has a tendency to ache, so I suppose I should go in and see him again, eh?
Copyright 2014 Michelle Hakala
http://www.winebird.com/
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