Foreigner

No matter how hard they are trying to help you, you always stumble a bit when you enter someone else’s world. Two days before the second flat-lining, I had already gone into St. Catharsis Hospital for an EKG (I thought. Is that the same thing as an electrocardiogram? The letters don’t quite match up.)  I had gotten a slip of paper in the mail (doctors mail you things here in Canada), telling me I had something or other coming up, and I noted it on my calendar. (Not that that guarantees anything, but you should be proud of me for trying.) Then I got a phone call from my former clinic in Harbor Town, asking if I was coming in for my EKG there, which made me wonder whether I’d gotten the St. Catharsis detail right in the first place—the slip of paper was who knows where. So I called St. Catharsis, who didn’t know anything about the appointment but said they would pass on my question to Dr. Blue-and-Brown’s Super-Competent-Nurse Tish.  S.C.N did indeed call me back (nurses call you back in Canada) and said, yes, be there at 8:15. After I hung up, I realized I’d forgotten to ask where there was.

In I went. To the wrong place, of course. Apparently they don’t do those kinds of tests in the Cancer Clinic. No, you have to go to Central Registration. And stand in the middle of a bunch of people, looking for where to “take a number,” because there are no slips of paper with any numbers anywhere. Oh wait. You are supposed to tap a big screen, hanging right in front of your face, and then a slip of paper rolls out with a number. Then you sit down and watch other newbies face the same learning curve. The papers actually have numbers and letters on them (you go to the head of the line if you are in active labour--as opposed to unactive labour, I guess. I don’t ever remember having any unactive labour), and you have to get that right, too. Or get sent back to wait your turn. (Canada is so organized).

And then you get asked why you don’t have a health card. And get called Annnn. And get handed a receipt to take to the cashier (“You can pay on your way out, hon; the cashier isn’t open yet.” Registrars in Canada are so trusting).  “And just go through the set of brown double doors right next to ER (hmmm) for your…Muga Scan.” Wait. Wait. What was that again? (She wrote it down on a piece of paper for me. In red.) What in the world is a Muga Scan? I thought I was here for an EKG or something. You don’t know what a Muga Scan is? I mean, is it even for the heart? Yes, go ahead and sign me up. Someone will explain (but not, as I found out, the young volunteer holding the doors open and helping me find my fourth waiting room. “No, she said, if I tried to explain it, I would just get it wrong.”) Sigh.

The sign outside the double doors said Nuclear Medicine. Nuclear Medicine! How cool was that! I was going to have nuclear medicine done on me and not just any old plain EKG. A nice lady in  a lab coat called for “Annnn” and finally explained what a Muga Scan did. Yes, it was for the heart. She would be injecting me (twice—I offered the PICC line, but she wasn’t going for it) with radioactivity that would show up in a machine. She was going to take pictures of how my left ventricle pumped red blood cells back out. Ok, it took me several tries to get this figured out. I had to ask her to slow down and repeat things because she was talking way too fast for me, a foreigner in this land, with no spot in my mental dictionary for muga scans. She was patient, (but not a patient, which was me; not sure which is harder), and maybe I got the gist.

After waiting the proper 15 minutes in the waiting room for the radioactive red blood cells to take over my body, during which I mentioned to Robert I had forgotten my water bottle and was getting thirsty and had he seen a drinking fountain anywhere, and the other lady in the waiting room said, “Here, I have an extra one.” (People in Nuclear Medicine waiting rooms in Canada are nice), Nuclear Lab Lady called, “Annnnn.”

I lay down flat, got battened down with a big heavy grey strap, got a white blanket put over me, slid into the bowels of the great white Nuclear Machine that moved silently right up against my face, and fell asleep. My first nap of the day, probably one of several (I went out with three girlfriends to see Far from the Madding Crowd--great chick flick--and missed the whole visit in the car because I was on my second nap, bobbing almost all the way into Janey’s lap, and apparently narrowly missing getting whacked as she waved her hands about in her usual, emphatic, Janey way). When I sat up to leave, Nuclear Lab Lady asked me if I planned to be crossing any borders within the next three days. I would set off alarms, she said. Cool. Maybe I will try that, and meet more Polite Canadian and American Border Guards.

After that it was easy. I knew my away out, no longer a foreigner to the world of Muga Scans. Except Robert had to remind me about the cashier. And wait. What’s a muga?

P.S. The flat-lining incident yesterday kept provoking more new tests, and I kept offering, “I’ve had a muga, don’t you want to check that?” Foreheads wrinkled. I was told on the one hand, mugas are for oncologists, not cadiologists, and on the other hand, the tests are interchangeable.  Hmmm. I suppose every new culture has its mysteries.

And what's a beta?