It had been three weeks since I visited the hospital and now it was time again to take that drive up to Farmington for my end of treatment CT scan. Ever wonder if people in Rhode Island get a RI scan, or folks in New York get a NY scan. Just talking out loud! Anyway, I was prepared this time for that gosh awful drink they give you to consume before the scan and I knew that if I had to pee, it was ok to do so (note another blog entry when I ended up holding that 1/2 gallon of stuff for more than 2 hours).
Accessing my port this time was a piece of cake and I had a wonderful nurse who had a beautiful London accent. Although the scan went well, clothing prep was still a challenge. For whatever reason, they don’t have you change into a Jhonny for this procedure. Instead they had me lay down on my back and slide my pants down to make sure the zipper and buttons where not included in the scan. Wouldn’t that be a hoot. To have a radiologist call me to say that I don’t have Ovarian Cancer but I do have a terminal zipper disease. So I pull the pants down to where I thought they were low enough, they slide me in the machine and at the same time ask if I am wearing a bra. Yes I replied. Then she asked if it had hooks. Yup I said. Out the table slides and now I am asked to take off my bra. Now there is no changing room in the CT scan area so I did what my daughter used to do at soccer games. I worked my arm through my shirt, unhooked the bra, pulled it out of the sleeve, put my arm back into my shirt sleeve and repeated the process on the other side until I was holding my bra and had my shirt back in place. No place to put the bra so I put it over my head (which doesn’t go into the CT scan machine). I was exhausted as the table once again slid in the machine. I went through one scan when the table came back out again and I was asked to pull my pants down a bit more because they could see a button on the scan. I complied.
The scan was done on a Friday and the following Monday I received a letter from my insurance company saying I had been cleared for out-patient surgery from 9/15/2014-10/8/2014. Now I received the same letter days after my last CT scan in May as my surgerical oncologist is extremely proactive and wants to be ready to go if something is found. But I was getting a bit nervous that I never called to get my last treatment blood results (CA 125 cancer marker) and I didn’t know when they might call me about my CT scan results in that I was heading to Florida. So the patient in me decided to call my doctor’s office and get some info. My nurse, Becca, informed me that my CA 125 marker was 10 (normal) and my CT scan showed nothing, not even a zipper! So I’m off to Florida with a clean report and nothing but sunshine and golf awaiting me.
