3 Things I Hate About CT Scans

Today is another ct scan with contrast to see if that bastard Uterine Leiomyosarcoma (uLMS) has returned. And while I’m extraordinarily grateful to have health insurance and get these scans every three months because uLMS has a recurrence rate of between 60-70% (and that’s with my uterus getting evicted last August), I still also hate them.

Here are three things I hate most about them today:

IV Insertions

I’ve got what I call shy veins. They roll, they hide, they do not want to be found. For blood draws I’ve learned to tell the phlebotomist to use the top of my hand – those veins know how to stand up and say hello.

You can’t do that with the IV’s placed for ct scan contrast because if the view blows, the dye can cause permanent nerve damage to your life. Like, nerve pain in the very hands I’m using to type this – for the rest of my life? Nope, I’m not down with that risk.

December’s scan access was a literal nightmare of multiple tries from multiple techs. The first tech stopped at try #2 when he hit my nerve. That was a new and very much not fun type of pain. I literally cried out from the pain, startling the both of us!

New tech, new arm, same story.

Except he used some sort of vein finding machine straight out of Star Wars and very carefully, very slowly got to the vein – but the needle was pushing against the nerve and that was also it’s own form of agony.

So the IV placement coming up today has me wishing it was safe to drive on Ativan – I am not a calm kitten this morning.

Drinking that Contrast

It doesn’t taste bad per say, it just doesn’t taste right.

I don’t know how to describe the taste yet. Maybe after a few more go arounds I’ll find words for it.

But the reason I hate drinking it is because of waiting rooms full of unmasked people putting me (and everyone else there) at risk of catching the flu, Covid, RSV, and who knows what else! I’m immunocompromised, catching ‘just a bug’ is actually quite dangerous for me these days. I mask everywhere.

And I’m disgusted with our health care system that has people convinced they don’t need to mask. In December I shared the waiting room with two other cancer patients, one of whom was in a hospital gown and had the baldness of a long term chemo patient – why aren’t her doctors telling them of the risks of catching ‘just a bug’ while under chemo?!?

Also, I’m beginning to wonder if bird flu is about to become the next pandemic?

The waiting for results

Waiting and waiting, hoping beyond hope it’ll still be clear, terrified it’ll show multiple new tumors spread throughout my abdomen and that one (or more) of them will be inoperable.

The waiting for results game is a slow trickle of existential fear with small moments of hope.

Then comes the email that new test results ready and I race to login and click “tests” – yep, there it is, the scan results. When I click to open it I can feel myself dissociating, buffering against the potential bad news.

I’ll read it through, then I’ll read it through again just to make sure I understand what the results are saying.

I hope this time they still say No Evidence of Disease.

Thanks for reading.