Monday, December 18, 2006

My next-door-neighbor just belched.

And I heard it loud and clear. As previously established, there are no sound barriers between our rooms. Awesome. I finally had my CT scan today. That was one of the most clinically disturbing things I've ever been through. The room was dominated by the PHILIPS Machine that scans you. There were blinking lights, reflective stains on the wall from a drip in the ceiling, fluorescent overhead can lights, a rather large, black nurse-woman with a lazy eye, and again, the Machine. She laid me out on the bed? plank? surface that moves into the huge hole of the Machine. Red lasers scanned me. A female mechanized voice told me to "Please, don't move. Remain calm." The visible machinery started spinning, spinning, spinning around and around my body, scanning my sinuses for infections. And I didn't move. I tensed up, but hell if I didn't move. And then the lazy-eyed nurse told me it's over. And she gave me her forearm to pull myself up with because my neck is mildly useless on account of the stitches and catheter. And then she told me she'd called Transportation, please wait here. So I sat in my blue-leather wheelchair and waited for Transportation to wheel me out of the nuclear medicine area and back to my room. I waited. I waited. The nurse left her little viewing room behind glass. The Machine made intermittent noises, reminding me that it now owned a little bit of my soul. I waited. And Transportation took me back to my room where I promptly collapsed on my bed and waited for my pounding heart to relax. True story. Still no chemo.

2 comments:

Megan/Yuping said...

Love.

Halley said...

Oh hunny! I sent you cookies, they should be there on Friday! Your blog is amazing, you really will have a bestseller on your hands in 2 years, if you keep the blog up and combine it all, you describe things so well. I miss you terribly and think of you often as you are going through this difficult stuff. You are in my prayers always. Miss you!