I am going to Gettysburg tomorrow with my BF. And I am flying. I am thinking positive — I will not get snowed in to the Cleveland airport, I will not get snowed in to the Cleveland airport, I will not get snowed in to the Cleveland airport, I will not get snowed in to the Cleveland airport, I will not get snowed in to the Cleveland airport …..
I had my weekly blood test, therefore, on Thursday (today) this week. The 8:15 AM blood draw went fine — the mediport makes life so much easier, I’d definitely recommend it to anyone — but then I made the error of mentioning the pain in my side to the nurse.
The pain is located on the left (just like Lumpy was) and it seems to be centered in my rib cage. Its a sharp pain — you runners out there would call it a stitch pain — but it really is only noticeable when I take a deep breath in.
Having run around (literally) for a year with Hodgkin’s Disease in my belly, well, I guess the nurses take me pretty seriously when I mention pain. The on-call doctor saw me and sent me for a chest x-ray to rule out a pulmonary embolism.
Now I needed to be at work at 10:00 (noon at the very latest), but I figured, how bad can this be? How long can this take?
Getting a routine chest x-ray took until 10:30.
I then marched back over across the street to the cancer center. The on-call doctor (I have no clue where my doctor is...guess he's not here today) saw me quickly. He said my chest x-ray looked normal (well, as normal as it could look with those huge medinastinal Hodgkin’s masses in there), but he felt due to my symptoms they needed to rule out a blood clot, even though a blood clot wasn’t real likely given I went running yesterday and had been active and had no swelling or other symptoms. He said he needed to make sure because if something went wrong, he would obviously feel really bad for missing it ... and my family would be mad at him ... but his real concern was my doctor would kill him. That made me laugh.
I really like the on-call doctor - he's the youngest oncologist and he's super nice. If it had been my doctor I would have given him a hard time. haha. So even though I was hungry and thirsty and didn't want a scan, I went back across the street for it. I dutifully sat, stomach growling like a wild animal (I really am hungry today), until 12:00 when I finally got the CT scan of my chest. They had to poke my arm (luckily the tech was good, but I still hate to be poked) since they can't use the port for some reason. The CT was otherwise uneventful.
I then walked back out into the outpatient radiology room where they told me to wait for the results. Well, my stomach was by now in utter rebellion. Ravenous! It wanted food and it wanted it now. I told the attendant I was going to the cafeteria and if I died on the way from some blood clot so be it. It didn’t help that all the magazines in the radiology department were from 2005 and all of the TVs were tuned to soap operas and suddenly the waiting area was filled with whining babies. (Where did they all come from!)
So I bought a turkey sandwich and a salad. I ate both in the cafeteria then returned, figuring by now they must have my results. hahaha. Yeah right.
Finally at 2:30, the on-call doctor told me that I didn’t have a blood clot or any other abnormality (again other than a really big chest mass) and I was free to go. So that was my entire day. At least I got out of work, so I guess that's a plus. I can only hope that I have better luck in the airport tomorrow. And at least I know I can go to Gettysburg without worry of imminent demise from side pain.
(By the way, the pain is still there and we still have no clue what the heck is causing it.)
I will not get snowed in to the Cleveland airport, I will not get snowed in to the Cleveland airport, I will not get snowed in to the Cleveland airport, I will not get snowed in to the Cleveland airport, I will not get snowed in to the Cleveland airport …..
