Back to the hospital today for a full afternoon of tests and scans. I started by seeing my lovely neighbour/ENT consultant to discuss what we knew so far. I love this about him – he basically says ‘I’m going to tell you everything I know’ – and it reassures me that he’s not hiding anything from me. Not that he would, but cancer does make you very paranoid.
I then went for a dental x-ray to check my teeth will be able to withstand radiation, as one of the side-effects is that the jaw bone becomes weak and crumbly. Next, it was off for a CT scan with contrast dye. This was an interesting experience. Quite similar to the MRI, but shaped more like a doughnut than a tunnel, and I had to have some dye injected into my arm beforehand to help the images show up on the scan. This has the effect of putting a metallic taste in your mouth, but more bizarrely it also makes you feel like you have wet yourself. I was warned about this beforehand, so I asked the lady how I would know if I had actually been to the loo on the scanner, rather than just feeling like I had. She assured me I would just know – and it turns out she was correct. It’s a very strange feeling indeed, but it’s a welcome distraction from the needle in your arm and the whizzing and whirring of the machine.
After the CT scan, I went to the ultrasound department, where a somewhat flustered consultant flew in the door, scanned my neck, said he couldn’t see anything untoward and therefore he wasn’t doing the fine needle aspiration (biopsy) that he was meant to do on the suspicious lymph node. I took this to mean there definitely was no cancer in my neck – hooray. After that mammoth day of being poked, prodded and told to lie still for 40 minutes on cold, hard metal sheets, it was home time. Phew.
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