Humor me

Today I had another MUGA scan. The receptionist hands you a piece of paper with a list that says, “You are here for:

X-ray – a technologist will come for you…

Ultrasound -  a technologist will come for you… etc. etc.

And you can tell they are a little embarrassed about the MUGA scan because they don’t call it an immediately recognizable name like X-ray. They say, “You are here for nuclear medicine!” Hmm.  At least it’s better than some of the other options for names out there: cardiac blood pooling imaging (as a human and an English teacher, I have several problems with this one) or better yet, radionuclide ventriculography (ok, just try to imagine telling the receptionist you are here for this). That mouthful actually means they put a radioactive tracer in your blood and track its progress through your heart so that they can see if the chemo is damaging anything in there.

The nurse that came to get me was young and petite and quiet-spoken, and she had trouble finding my veins. Well actually she found my veins all right, but she poked (that is the word they use for it. Let’s be honest: it’s more like stabbed) around them, through them and not far enough into them, or something, (she couldn’t get the tracer into my veins; it was like my veins were rejecting it—pushing the stuff right back out or something. It was for a MUGA scan, after all). All the while she kept turning to me and asking, “Are you feeling all right? Are you feeling all right? Are you feeling all right?” Maybe I was turning pale, but I have to admit the questions were making me feel as light-headed as the multiple stabs. I did feel a bit sorry for her—she looked about as old as Elai—but I felt more sorry for me! I now had a purple lump welling up on the back of my hand, and the tracer wasn’t even started! She gently held my hand in both of hers, looked into my eyes (maybe she should try being a chaplain) and said I had fragile veins. Fragile veins? I casually mentioned that I had had dozens of IVs by now, and no one had mentioned that I had fragile veins. Fragile just doesn’t sound promising, does it?

To her eternal credit, when she surmised I was uncomfortable with this operation (!), she said, “Let me go get a colleague.” An old guy came in, sat down, and in went the tracer, first try. Whew. He commented, as if to cover her, “Those veins can sure move around a lot, can’t they.” I must say I had never noticed before. Then my gal came right back in and escorted me to the big machine and did a fine job, I assume, cardiac blood pooling imaging me. I was quite proud of her.

I thought I would be able to go home and recoup my good humor before the next trial (I told you I am a wimp—absolutely no pain tolerance whatsoever), but I had to go to clinic here in town (it’s in the back of a basement of a nursing home next to the getaway stairs. Why would anyone put a nursing station in a basement? I get the getaway stairs) and get stitches pulled so the drain tube could be pulled that was snaking all the way from under the surgery scar up to my collar bone. It didn’t help that when I showed up at 1:00 the nurse said I was supposed to come at 1:30, and when I showed up again then, she said I didn’t actually have an appointment; I had ceased to exist in half an hour. I protested as nicely as I could, holding onto my side which stung from the tube, and she smiled. I think she’s Russian or Ukranian. Every time I’ve gone to this clinic, the nurse is a different ethnicity. Jamaican, Persian, Russian. Kind of cool. I’d like to work with them—just not in the basement. The stitch-pulling hurt. The tube-pulling did not. Robert was kind enough to wait until after the process to tell me that his stitches had hurt like the dickens. And this was just stitches for the drain. We haven’t mentioned any other stitches. Maybe those are self-dissolving. Let’s hope. If they are not, all you nurse friends of mine, don’t tell me!  I need some time to recoup my good humor.

a tattoo I will not be getting

Guess who asked if he could take the scissors home when he found they aren’t reused…