...Eugene was ready for his closeup yesterday! We headed west, towards Atlanta (and a very nice hospital) for a quick little CT scan (know to many as a "CAT" scan). CT stands for "computed tomography" or "computed axial tomography"--I don't know what any of those words mean. Basically, it's a way to use X-rays to look at the inside of your body in a three-dimensional fashion.
So, first things first, they had to find a reason to stick a needle in me. In this case, it's to inject "contrast" during the scan. The contrast helps them to be able to visualize all of the blood vessels and stuff, and actually turns out to be a pretty good reason for hitting me with a needle. The nurses were really sweet at this hospital and let me use my port instead of having to do an IV catheter in my arm or hand--which is nice for both parties because my veins are a pain in the you-know-what to access. For those that don't know, the port is a device that was surgically implanted before my first set of chemo treatments. It's on the right side of my chest, just below my collar bone, and serves as an access point to one of the big vessels that's close to my heart (just like all of you). To actually access it, they just have to use a special needle and poke through the skin over it and into the little bubble on top to be able to inject various (generally not very cool) substances. When they're done, they simpy pull the needle back out, and I get a cute little band-aid--instead of a giant bruise and a sore hand/arm like with catheters.
After that, I was ready for Eugene to be "ready for his closeup". I'm starting to notice a trend where I'm the one that has to do all the work for Eugene to just hang out and feed off all my suffering--as*hole. Anyways, they took me in this room with a huge machine that looks like a big donut sitting on its side. They told me to pull my pants down to my knees and lay on my back--that would've all been really weird had I not done it about 23542 times in the last six months. Of course the table is not exactly Serta-approved--it's more like an actual table. So I kicked off my flip flops (because I don't care about the rules regarding Labor Day and footwear), pulled my pants down, and did my best penguin walk to the table. I assumed the position on the less than comfy hard plastic table with my arms over my head and some kind of laser pointer alignment aid shooting me in the eye (as I read the little sign beside it that said not to look at it). The nurse hooked up all of the necessary cords and tubes and left me alone in the room with that giant donut machine and a bunch of whirring and buzzing sounds as she told me we would be beginning soon.
For the actual scan, the little table slowly slides in and out of the big donut machine. At various points a creepy, monotone voice instructed me to inhale and hold my breath as I slid through to the beginning position and stopped. At that point, I heard the nurse come back in. I could tell she was messing around with some bags of fluid and whatnot beside me, but was terrified to move and look for fear of messing up the multi-thousand dollar test and having to redo it. She told me that she was starting the contrast and I would soon start to feel warm all over, might taste something metallic in my mouth as though I had a coin in there (what?!?!?!), and it might feel like I was urinating on myself (WHAT?!?!?!?) but I wouldn't be (well thank goodness...I'd be a tad concerned if whatever crap she was pumping into my veins was causing me to pee myself). Before she was finished elaborating on the pseudo-pantspeeing experience, I felt the warmth she had referred to, and was wishing they'd turn up the A/C in that place. She left the room again. They slid me in and out of the machine. Mr. Creepyvoice told me to hold my breath again, and next thing I knew it was over. I got to do the dorky penguin walk back over to my shoes, and was allowed to pull my pants back up (thank goodness I was wearing my "good underwear").
And that was it. Before I knew it, I was passed out in the passenger seat as my driver (aka, Chris) was escorting me back to Athens. So what they ended up doing was taking a whole bunch of pictures in a slice-wise formation--think of the body like a loaf of bread. They'll be able to use those slices and a bunch of fancy computer technology and things I'll never want to understand to recreate a three dimensional image of what's going on inside my body--namely Eugene, in all his glory. They'll use some more fancy computer buttons to measure and evaluate his morphology--shape, size, conformation, relation to other important structures--and then we'll have that analysis to compare to after these next two months' worth of chemo blasts do their job. Sometime around Thanksgiving I'll get to visit the donut machine and Mr. Creepyvoice again, and we'll see that all of our prayers and wishes have been heard and granted!
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