Another somewhat sleepless night worrying about what I was going to experience on Friday. In the morning I was going to the hospital to get a full body series of x-rays done to be followed by the bone marrow biopsy in the afternoon.
Even without an appointment, I was able to get in for the x-rays pretty quickly. They went through a series of about 25 x-rays in less than 45 minutes. You find yourself sitting there dreading what they might find. I don’t know if it was nerves or just the temperature in the room, but I seemed to be shivering during the whole exercise.
Multiple myeloma attacks the bones creating soft spots. As they go through the x-rays, you can’t help but wonder if they might have just found something but aren’t saying anything. X-ray after x-ray you can’t help but wonder. Before you know it, it was over and we went furniture shopping because I couldn’t eat before the biopsy.
Back to another waiting room waiting for another IV and procedure. Luckily, Dr. Obenchain was right and this would be a piece of cake. Finally, I ran into a nurse that knew how to put in an IV and it was done in just one try. After a quick explanation from the anesthesiologist and surgeon, we were off to the races. Not sure what happened, but it was over before I knew what had happened. One minute, I was asked to roll on my side and then the next minute I was lying on my back and 20 minutes of my life had disappeared.
The only real excitement of the afternoon was as I laid there in my little hospital gown and the apparently gay nurse uncovered my manhood to the rest of the rather large room. Still a little high, I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I think I scared the 60+ year old nurse three beds away.
Luckily, there were little side effects and we were quickly out of the hospital and on our way. Amazing, in one week, I had gone from being seemingly perfectly healthy to staying three days in the hospital, a kidney biopsy and a bone marrow biopsy. I had had blood taken from me at least 12 times and had gotten a shot in my stomach. And I thought finals week was hard in college.
Why my modest man failed to share is that while is his drugged stupor he continued flirting with this nurse bragging about how good he was with getting his IV in the first time and without problems. I think the guy nurse was flattered when John told him "I'm going to come back to you whenever I need pricked!" We all got a good chuckle out of that one and John was clueless.
ReplyDelete