A day in Radiology

On Friday, my dad and I went down to the SCCA for me to do some tests. We got there about noon and picked up a prescription I put in on Wednesday. Then we went to the 2nd floor where all my appointments were. (There are 7 floors there) They called me back to draw some blood and inject me with this radioactive stuff for my bone scan later. I don't know how hard it is for nurses to find veins to poke into, but I seem to always find the ones that really still have no clue how to do it. Let's just say where this nurse put it was not comfortable and I have a big bruise now and it feels funny in my arm, two days later.
After they did that I went to a little waiting room before my MRI. I basically was forced to read an extremely outdated People magazine. That was the only thing to do there. Then they came and brought me into the room for the MRI. They gave me ear plugs and I got on the bed. Then they put these huge headphones on and moved me into the machine and put some things around my head so I wouldn't move it. You have to lay really perfectly still for this test. I was able to listen to Lifehouse-Who We Are for the 30 minutes of testing. Then they pulled me back out, injected some stuff in me and put me back in for 10 more minutes.
I went back to the recovery room, where I was originally when they drew the blood, and was given juice and cookies. They finally (this was several hours later mind you) took out the IV from my arm. It had been so uncomfortable. Then I went and joined my restless father in the waiting room. We waited for about 45 minutes before they called me back for my bone scan.
The bone scan was interesting. The guy strapped me onto the bed (that sounds bad..) and then I couldn't move ANYTHING at all during the whole imaging process. The "camera" aka freaking huge square thing, got really close to my face and slowly moved down my body to take images of my bones. We had to redo my toes at the end because I was hanging over the bed a little and the tips got cut off on the images. Then the guy did two more images of my left side of my rib cage. He said he saw something but was pretty sure it might be from my biopsy. He has to get the scan approved by the radiologist before letting me go in case they see something and want additional tests. Well, she wanted even more imaging on my left rib cage. I had to have my arms above my head the entire time. It slowly went 180* around me and oh my goodness. My right arm was hurting so bad. At the end, they had to move my arms for me because they were so dead.
I received juice and string cheese and was then free to go. When I got out to the waiting area, my dad literally was the only person out there. Even the receptionists were gone. It was past 6. What a day!
I go back on Wednesday to do a bunch of other stuff but Dr Tykodi will go over my results with me then. I'm a little nervous about what they might have seen on my left rib cage. I've heard of Kidney Cancer patients having to have ribs removed. Hopefully all will be ok and I wont have to have that.
Until next time...

-Mallory