An insider's guide to my innards!
Greetings my bloggy buddies,
It's been a busy couple of weeks indeed! It's hard to believe that I only touched down in Vancouver 14 days ago considering everything I've done since landing. Since my MRI I've sat through enough tests to last me well into the next decade. 2 days after my MRI, I was back at Vancouver General Hospital for a thrilling day of pokes and prods. My day started off with rather simple sounding "blood tests" which turned out to be more like a marathon of blood sucking. 15 vials of blood and a light, dizzy head later I was ushered out of the lab and off to X-ray/radiology for some chest X-rays and a up close look at my innards at an abdominal ultrasound. I had a lovely face to face with my spleen, liver and hepatic vein systems and got well acquainted with all the lumps and bumps that keep things ticking inside me. This was all under that gentle guidance of an ex-pat Australian ultrasound tech who had some rather strong ideas about S.E Asia and Bali. While surveying my gall bladder I got to hear about how all Balinese men are prostitutes and how S.E Asia is full of lazy men who do nothing and abuse their wives. Keeping true to form, she reminded me of all those lovely Aussies who litter the sidewalks of Kuta spewing racist slurs on beer tinged breath (although her breath wasn't beer tinged thank god). She was nice and gentle and I'm sure she was just trying to make polite conversation but it was rather awkward sitting there listening to her slag the ethnicity of most of my friends. I have many Balinese friends, none of whom are prostitutes, and as far as I know none of my S.E Asian buddies beat their wives.
After my ultrasound I popped into X-ray for some chest X-rays which was rather uneventful. The only thing the technician asked me was whether I was pregnant or not to which I replied " I sure as hell hope not". She found that rather funny and with the flick of a button my lungs were naked to the world. Next stop, the cardiac floor for an ECG and and ECHO-cardiogram. The ECG took all of 3 seconds and for the life of me I can't figure out how in 3 seconds they can figure anything out about my heart but apparently they can. Then I was carted down to an adjacent room for my ECHO-cardiogram which is pretty much an ultrasound of my heart. The ultrasound technician was yet another Aussie (must be some work share thing between Canada and Australia or something). This one was much nicer, not racists in the slightest and much better looking (and male). He spent 20 minutes rubbing my bare chest down with goopy stuff and showing me all the little valves in my heart flapping away. The technicians are not allowed to talk to you about the "state" of your heart but they can point out all the bits and what they are doing. Considering I received an A in grade 12 biology I, Dr. Zeiler M.D, gave myself a clean bill of health and pronounced that all my heart bits were working tickety-boo. He could not comment either way but he smiled which says to me I was correct. Goopy chest rubdown complete I was done for the day.  |
| Hello liver! (this isn't my CT scan...I stole it from the internet) Apparently the yellow circle is this guy's lunch |
My next day of tests was by far the worst. I had to have an abdominal CT scan to check the blood vessels in my liver and surrounding organs. In order to do this they have to inject you with dye and then scan how the dye runs through your veins. One of the unfortunate side effects is for some reason as you go through the machine the dye heats up in your veins and you get the awful hot sensation inside your body which starts in your throat and slowly moves down to your toes. I'm not a fan of things in my veins that don't belong there so this was not terribly pleasurable for me. Luckily it only lasted a few minutes and then it was over. Apparently the dye they used "sits in your kidneys like glue" and contains iodine so they ordered me to drink as much water as possible to wash it out of my system quickly. Being a practiced water guzzler from my time in Thailand I set "operation clean kidneys" was in full effect and by the end of the day I'm sure all the evil gluey, iodine laden, innard heating dye was out of my fragile little veins.
And so another thrilling day at Vancouver General came to an end. I've gotten behind in my posts and have since this day had a thrilling day of psychological assessments which will require a post all unto themselves. Stay tuned Liver Lovers....the thrills and spills continue!
