Adventures in Radiology

By 9 am tomorrow, I am going to be thoroughly sick of the radiology department at De Paul Medical Center. Not that I will have spent all that much time there; it's more a case of making three trips there in 24 hours for a net total of maybe an hour of actual testing altogether. This is highly inefficient.

It all started when my doctor referred me for a thyroid scan. I was told I had to be at the hospital at 7:30 am, for Pete's sake, and not to eat any seafood or take any antihistamines or vitamins for a week before hand. OK, I can see the seafood, maybe, because it has a lot of iodine and maybe that messes up the test which uses radioactive iodine. But antihistamines? And vitamins? Huh? And nothing was said about iodized salt, so what does that say about the seafood rationale? I'm sure there must be a perfectly good reason for it, but it sure wasn't explained to me. I don't like inexplicable mandates.

So I set my alarm for 6 am (the horror...) and drag myself out of bed, dress, eat, and slog through the I-64/264 traffic, and make it to the hospital and radiology by 7:30. Where I then sit and wait for half an hour for them to call me in. First question the technician asks me: "Did you eat or drink anything this morning?" Hell, yes, no one told me I wasn't supposed to. Well, when I told her I ate around 6:30 -- and it didn't include seafood, vitamins, or antihistamines -- I guess she decided that was OK. After running through another batch of questions, including the inevitable "Is there any chance you could be pregnant or breastfeeding?" (look at me, honey, and check my age on my chart -- do you really think it's likely?), she hands me a pill -- one capsule -- and a glass of water, tells me to take it, and then says to be back at 1:15 for the scan and don't eat or drink anything till 10:30. Well, 5 hours is too long to hang around, for sure, so I drive back home and catch up on some of the sleep I missed by going in early and sitting on my thumbs for half an hour just for 5 minutes of questions and a pill.

Eat lunch (after 10:30, and no seafood), and drive back to Norfolk to the hospital. The tech (who looks about 16) is apparently training another technician (a guy who looks maybe 17). Well, OK, I suppose they have to learn on someone. First they need to do a "count" (the guy kept saying they were going to "take some pictures", and the girl said don't call them pictures, you'll confuse the patients because the pictures come later), which involves pointing a cone at my throat and asking me to hold still while they take the count. Then they repeat this only directed at my femur. Now, you might think that if you have to hold still for this, they'd have you sit in a sturdy chair with a headrest and your feet firmly on the floor, so the parts you have to hold still would be supported. You would be wrong. I was seated on a flimsy wheeled stool with a padded top and a low back, and my feet were on the rim around the legs.

Next they "took some pictures." I was lying on a really, really uncomfortable and narrow table (so narrow I couldn't put my arms down by my sides, and what felt like a big ridge in the table running crosswise across my back) while the tech coached the trainee through the process of setting up and running four scans on my thyroid. Lord, they'd better have turned out OK, because by the time they were done I could barely sit up.

Now I have to be back there by 8:30 in Wednesday for another set of radiation counts (but thankfully not another scan), which is supposed to take about 15 minutes. So that makes three round trips in just over 24 hours, with two of the inbound trips during rush hour. Next time my doctor wants me to have tests, I've gotta see about having them done in Virginia Beach or Chesapeake. And hope they've got some decent chairs and examining tables.