Well, I actually slept ok last night, for the first time in a pretty long while! This was a very good thing, as I had to get up early to go to the hospital for my bone scans this morning. The hospital in the town where I live doesn't have a nuclear medicine department, so mum had to take me to the bigger hospital in the next town over. I got realllllllllly car sick on the way there, and the nausea from it stuck around for ages! It was very unfun! Eventually, it passed, though!
There was a very long wait to get my first scan done, and to get the dye injected (around an hour). I was feeling really sick, and sitting up waiting was really hard. The air conditioning at the hospital was very cold and drafty, and made my joint pain a lot worse :S (especially in my elbows and hands), and I was all nervous! Murder She Wrote was on the tv in the waiting room, but the sound was too low to hear. Therefore, we decided to give the characters voices of our own! We decided on a couple of possible murderers (because they looked shifty, had a toupee, or wore too much eye liner). It is hard to believe that people actually had some of the hair styles from that show! Hairspray it til it's concrete! Hehe! Eventually, I was called in. Mum came with me to push my wheelchair, and to keep me company!
The lady who did my scans was really nice! Although she said that I had "deep veins", and she had trouble finding one, I didn't even feel it when she put the drip in my arm :) The first lot of scans didn't take long. It was all rather interesting! I had scans done of my knees, and then a full body one. I had to lie on a thin bed with an odd pillow which gave such a weird deflating sensation when I put my head on it! I giggled! The machine was so mechanically! It moved me around and moved itself around me robotically! It was pretty cool. I had my arms strapped to my sides (which was surprisingly comfortable, as it took all the pressure off of my shoulders and arms!) The scan didn't seem to take that long, and I almost fell asleep during it!
After scan number one, I was allowed to leave the hospital for four hours. We went to Spotlight (which is a large craft and fabric shop) to look for cross stitch and long stitch kits, but they had very few... They seemed to have stopped stocking a lot of the crafty things I like to buy and do! I was pretty disappointed with their range. I think I will be shopping at Lincraft or the local craft shop instead in the future!
After not buying anything at Spotlight (for like the first time EVER), we went across the road to a fancy-ish cafe restaurant for lunch (YES! We did get to go out! I was so unbelievably happy, I could have cried, seriously!) I had a chicken Caesar salad that was divine!!! I also had a really nice drink called a blood orange Frou-Frou. It was made from boiled fruit and spices, and had lots of awesomely cool ice. (It was above 40 degrees Celsius here today!) I also had iced tea and water because I was supposed to drink a lot after being injected with the dye for my scans. After lunch, we came home for a short sleep before my next scan. I got to sleep for about twenty minutes before I had to wake up and go back to the hospital.
When we went back to the nuclear medicine department, there had been an emergency and we were told that my scan would be half an hour late. The nice lady suggested that we go and have a drink or something while we waited, so we did! I had apple juice and this marvellous invention that I had never seen before today - a double chocolate fudge wagon wheel... mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm =D (Yep, it tasted as good as it sounds, or even better!) After our little snack, we went back to have my last scans.
I had to have a lot more of them than in the morning. I had a lengthier full body scan, then scans of my feet, knees, hands and elbows. The feet scan was the hardest, because I had to sit up on the thin little bed and stay completely still with my feet on the scanner. I was really tired, as it had been such a full on day for me! I was all shaky, achy and exhausted! Luckily, it was over within a few minutes.
So now that all my scans are over, I have to wait until next week to find out what the results were. In a way, I hope that they find something that can be easily fixed so that I can feel better. In another way, I am very scared that they might find something bad that they can't easily fix, or that they won't find anything at all (and they can't fix something that they can't find). I don't really feel nervous anymore, though. The nerves about the results will probably hit me later on! Tomorrow, I have to go and have about a dozen blood tests. I am a bit nervous about their results! They are to re-assess my inflammation markers, and to see whether or not I have rheumatoid arthritis, or various other conditions.
I guess no matter what the tests say, I will survive somehow =). I always do!
~Adrielle =)
