Today didn't turn out exactly as we'd planned. It was supposed to be radiation treatment #16 followed by occupational therapy. After radiation, the radiation oncologist met with us to go over some of the early reports from the testing Friday. Early reports indicated the need for more tests. The tests required insurance pre-certification and a nurse review, so we waited for an hour and a half for the approval, then was sent to outpatient admitting for a CT Scan. During the CT, they inject you with a "contrast" that gets circulated throughout the body and turns you all warm and gooey inside!
We finally got home around 2:00 p.m. from the first test, caught up on some work and rested a little before heading back down at 4:00 to St. Lukes for an MRI. The MRI was scheduled for 5:00 and was supposed to take 30 minutes. They took me back a little before 5:00 and got me ready. They said there would be a 20 minute session, followed by another contrast injection-this one cool instead of warm, then another 10 minute session. If you haven't had an MRI, it's really noisy. It's like a jack hammer going off right in front of you face, and even with headphones on it's extremely loud. The first session seemed a lot longer than 20 minutes, but there's not a clock in that tiny tube and I just figured the noise was messing with my perception of time. When it came time for the contrast, they had a hard time finding a usable vein. I've had so many IV's, injections, blood samples, etc. since Friday there's not much left. It took about 15 minutes to get a vein for the injection, then we finished up the last 10 minute session. When I got out I realized in been in there an hour and 15 minutes! We finally got home about 6:45.
Another long day, but hopefully with the results from today and some more results from Friday's tests we'll get some answers for what's going on and a direction on how to proceed.