Patient of the Day

This afternoon I returned from lunch got the exam room ready for the next thing on my schedule, an MRI brain. I've been in a very friendly mood at work lately, so I was pretty chatty with the woman who was there for the brain scan. I started telling her what to expect during the exam and asked her why she was here. Turns out a few weeks after her 40th birthday last month she found a lump in her breast, which lead to mammo, biopsy, and diagnosis of cancer. She's had lots of tests in the past couple of weeks to see if the cancer has metastasized, and has plans to meet with her doctor later this week to get all the test results, then will start chemo at the end of the week.

She was so nice and friendly and open... I really admire her optimism. We see lots of people of various ages and myriad ailments, and it's pretty interesting to see how people deal with illness and adversity. Some people get this 'woe is me' outlook, and it's sometimes difficult to sympathize with those patients.

Also, I admire the couple (or maybe more) of you reading my blog who have also beaten cancer.

I'm a Jerk

I have some stuff to blog, but my preferred computer has been infected with a horrible virus, I guess. I have pictures from last week's trip to Story, Indiana, pictures of some of the new stuff to decorate my new apartment, and will be going out of town again this weekend, so will have those pics, too. I'll get that stuff on my mac and get on it.

Tonight's last patient was an 11 year old boy for an MRI of his ankle. I went out to get him and groaned on the inside... this kid was SUCH a dork. I know it's not very nice to think that, but I did. He came stumbling back with me, walking down the wrong hallways and getting lost on the way out of the bathroom, and I was like, gimme a break. I mean, when I first saw this kid I thought, "Wow, what a relief to not be a parent... what a disappointment it must be if a kid turns out this dorky!" But he was so sweet and such a great patient! He asked a lot of questions and was very eager to see the machine and to lay very still... when I told him how important it was that he not move, he quickly laid his arms at his side and looked up at the ceiling-- he was ready to go! I burned his images onto a CD for him to take home so he could look at them and keep them, and he carried the CD out to his mom as if it were made of gold, using both hands.

Ok, lesson learned... even if a kid is super dorky he can still be nice and well-behaved and a pleasure to be around.

What, Me Whine?

Today brought another setback in the very long journey toward independent living in my home state. My soon-to-be landlord asked if I could move in a week later to accomodate the current tennant's recently pushed back closing on their new home. Seriously? I am so freaking tired of all this crap; I just want to live in a place with my stuff. It keeps getting farther away! What the heck? Last week I was 5 weeks away from moving, and here I am still 5 weeks away this week.

And work today, oh my gosh. We can get very busy, and the south side of Indy certainly must weigh more than the north side... I had 3 patients in a row tonight who were close to or over 300 pounds. Inevitably these patients complain about the small size of the magnet. Really? Don't you have that problem everywhere you go? Everything must be small to a 300 pound person. The first big guy was super claustrophobic, and was really nervous about having his knee scanned. The second lady came close to hyperventilating when I put her in the magnet to scan her shoulder, so she rescheduled her appointment to return a different day and get IV sedation. The third lady was a great patient. She knew our table weight limit was 450 pounds, but was amazed that anyone bigger than her could fit in the magnet. If a patient is much over 350, we usually can't do more than a foot or ankle, in case you were wondering.

So, that was today. It was like a 4.