Sunday night around 11 pm I drank the first bottle of the most disgusting "berry smoothie" I've ever had. I thought I was going to throw up. I was up all night with the worst gas pains I've ever had. I woke up at 4 to leave by 5. So I had basically no sleep. I drank the next bottle while I was sitting in Monday morning traffic on the 91. As soon as I arrived at my appointment I went straight to the bathroom and experienced several minutes of Montezuma's revenge. Awesome. Then a lady came and took me back for an injection. She jammed my vein so hard! Then she says I should not be around small kids for 2-3 days because of the amount of radiation they are putting in me. Really? Thanks for the heads up. Then she said her injection has to go through me for 3 hours so the bone scan won't be started until 10:30 and it takes 2 hours. Meanwhile I could get my CT scans done. For those I had to undress from the waist up and when I got in there the guy tells me to pull my pants down to my knees while I'm laying on the table. Awkward. Then I put my arms over my head and the machine went around a few times telling me to hold my breath and let it out. Then he stops, lifts my right arm up (where the line was) and says "tell me if this hurts" and injects me with iodine. That. Shit. Hurt. All the way down my arm. So I screamed "yes!" at him and he yelled to the other guy to stop the injection. There was also a small leak in the tube that he had to fix. I was burning from my head, down my throat, all the way to my crotch. I felt like I was on fire. I started to tear up because it hurt so bad. He did the injection again, but slower this time (still burned) and finally finished the stupid pictures. That was awful. I was done by 7:45 so I drove to Starbucks (since the period of fasting was over) and sat in my car to wait until 10:30. It was too cold to sit inside of Starbucks, or maybe I was still shaking from being upset.
The mall isn't open at 8 am so it was a very long wait until 10:30. I tried walking around the building a few times to kill time and get some exercise. I thought maybe it would make me feel better, but no. When the time finally arrived, I just had to lay still with my arms strapped to my sides and my feet were strapped together too. It was weird. The machine made very little noise so the entire time I felt like nothing was happening. The camera was like ON my face, so I closed my eyes most of the time and tried to relax to the Nora Jones CD she had playing. Sometimes I tried to peek because I swear she was just sitting there texting. About 30 minutes in, she made me put my arms over my head, which is uncomfortable. Then 30 minutes later she made me empty my bladder and come back. Then about 30 minutes later it was finally over. She kept asking me weird questions like "does your jaw hurt, or did you have a filling recently?" That freaked me out so I asked if everything looked normal. She said "well, it looks 'pretty normal' to me but the radiologist is the one who reads these. One time a lady didn't complain of any bone pain, and the radiologist found cancer all over her bones." Awesome lady, thanks for letting me know. Now I feel very reassured since I'm not having any pain. People can be so ... ugh.
At least my afternoon was better. I spent some time with friends at the pool, just made sure to keep a safe distance from small children. And now we wait for results... hopefully I am not due for another day like today for 6 more months!