I had to get up at 05:45 today to make it to the hospital by 06:45. Yuck. I have a bone scan, ECG, and bloodwork to do.
When I went into the nuclear medicine area to get even more radioactive substances injected into my body, I heard one of the staff grumbling about Mondays. I laughed to myself because obviously today is Tuesday! Right? It dawned on me that I just feel that way because I was here yesterday. Oops.
I’m supposed to drink a lot of water to flush the radioactive tracer out of my kidneys, so I went to Tim Hortons to get some tea. Their coffee is too disgusting to smell, let alone drink. The folks in Nuclear Imaging let me hide out in an area alone so I could drink my tea.
When I got to the Cardio-Pulmonary Department, the receptionist was venting about her husband’s ex, and how the ex never picks the kid up on Sundays because she drinks too much. The other receptionist said she shouldn’t be dragging the kid into it, which was fun to hear them debate. ?
The ECG was interesting to watch. There was a student doing the procedure on me, so I asked her a few questions to make sure she actually knew what she was doing. (hah)
Other than that, the bone scan was pretty boring. I had to get strapped into place on a bed so I wouldn’t move my hands or feet, then the scanner moved me through over a 17-minute period. After that, the scanner went around my torso, which took probably 25 minutes or so. I fell asleep a few times since I had to get up so early, so yeah. This procedure is not scary or painful at all.
After that, I had to get bloodwork done at the cancer centre by swiping my patient card at the kiosk for the first time. I guess it’s official now. Everything in the bloodwork looks great, and my hemoglobin is almost at the maximum of the range. That’s crazy, since it was less than half of what the minimum should be 10 years ago.
Once my bloodwork was done, I heard someone saying an anglicized version of my middle name. Since the name is very uncommon around these parts, I asked the phlebotomist if maybe someone mixed something up and is calling me. Sure enough, a woman walked in and said that it was her name, and because they don’t use accents, nobody ever knows how to say it. I laughed and told her that’s my middle name, complete with the accents. I also thought to myself, that I am really glad my parents didn’t reverse my middle and first names. People screw my name up enough as is.