I had to go back and forth from the main hospital and the cancer center for my scans. Usually, they are both in one building but there weren't any time slots open. Went to nuclear medicine for my injection and ended up staying there for 30 minutes. My veins are supposedly tiny. They also can't use my right arm because it is the mastectomy side. They never touch that arm when they withdraw blood or give shots.
When they stuck the needle in my arm to get the port set up, apparently, my veins started to move around so that they couldn't get the port set up. The first stick in my arm, I actually couldn't feel the nurse poking around as she was trying to get into the vein. It was weird. Then, the nuclear medicine tech got a specialist nurse who deals with difficult people like me. She tried another section of my arm and the same thing happened.
That is when the specialist nurse started to feel for veins on the top part of my wrist. That is also when I told them that the last time someone put a port there, he got yelled at by the CT tech because they couldn't use that port and they had to poke another part of my arm. Are you following me?
Well, this is how it looked the next morning morn. Beautifully colorful. A conversation starter?
A week later, I got the results that everything was stable. In other words, the cancer in my spine has not grown or spread to other areas. The emotions that followed were a bit more complicated, but I will try to write about that another day.
