CT Scans and Craneflies

I had a CT scan yesterday with contrast.   Since I had a nasty reaction to the barium solution I drank beforehand for the  previous CT scan,  I was told to arrive an hour or so before the scan to drink  a solution they had  at the center.  After I  registered  a nurse brought out a bottle of what appeared to be clear water.  It was Omnipaque, an iodine solution in powder form mixed with water. It actually was  nearly tasteless and much easier to get down than the barium solution.  Best of all, it caused no  nasty reactions. About an hour after I’d  finished drinking it,   a technician called me back,  took a finger prick blood test to  check kidney function and had a nurse access my port. While they were doing the preliminary positioning, test scans, etc., we discovered that the buttons on my new shirt are not plastic, as I thought, but have some metal component that  screwed up the image, so we  began over, sans shirt, and they  began pumping in the iodinated intravenous contrast. That is always such a strange sensation and I’m so glad the tech warned me about it he first time I had a scan. Within   seconds of the dye pumping in, you  feel   a lot of heat,  especially in the groin area,  and get the sensation that you  are wetting yourself.  If they had not  warned me I would have sworn I WAS actually wetting myself. It’s very strange, but passes quickly.  The table slid  into the CT doughnut,  the whirring began, a disembodied voice ordered me to " Breathe in," "Hold your breathe," "Breathe!" a couple of times and   before I knew it, the tech was telling me we were finished. Now to wait for the results and keep fingers and toes crossed that the rectal tumor and  metastasized  liver tumor have shrunk, there are no new lesions anywhere, and the existing  spots and lesions have disappeared or remained stable.

Not having had anything to eat or drink since supper the night before I was ravenous when we got home at around  1 P.M. and desperately craving  a cup of coffee. Mr. G made some coffee, and  ham and cheese sandwiches, with loose leaf lettuce from our own little crop growing on the deck.  After that I napped for a little while before going outside to do some watering in the greenhouse and weeding in my little jungle of a garden bed.  It is somewhat frustrating to get tired so very easily, but   working fifteen or twenty minutes then taking a ten or fifteen minute break DOES get the job done, albeit a bit slower than I would like. The plan was that   I would cook supper early than take a short  break before getting ready for yoga. I had told the instructor that I probably wouldn’t be there because  I’m usually so fatigued for  three or four days after I get unhooked from the pump, but this time, I had a lot more energy, so I planned to go. Problem is, I fell asleep on my “short” break and by the time I woke up  it was too late to even think about cooking supper, getting showered and going anywhere, so I missed yoga class.  We did have a nice supper, though: more recipes from Annabel Langbein: Mediterranean baked fish and a slightly tweaked version of her parsley mashed potatoes (I added sour cream), and  spinach bacon and avocado salad with raspberry vinaigrette.

Today I’ve been back outside weeding the jungle, fighting to control the  ever expanding soapwort, watching   the cedar waxwings   gobbling the berries off the holly tree, and  wondering why these two,  who I think are craneflies, were at it for well over an hour on the back door didn’t  get a room somewhere!