Finally some good news!

Hey Everybody,

I saw something pretty wild this past week and don’t I wish I could have opened the camera app on my phone fast enough to have caught it!  (iOS 5.0, I’m talking to you!)  Dr. Langston smiled!  It gets even better after that because… Oh Em Gee… then she said “We’ve gotten a good response, this is what we are looking for, VTEPA seems to be working.”  Now I know that’s a reasonably lukewarm and tentative sentence that would hardly incite a light-switch rave (and she literally stuck around just long enough to deliver that sentence) but this woman has had to deliver some of the most craptastic news I’ve ever heard in the last two long form meetings I’ve had with her in the outpatient treatment center.  To see the crisp white folds of her lab coat floating away and not be left with a feeling of dread and anger after meeting with her… I dunno, it was like I had been kissed on the forehead by Lady Gaga herself. Just the right amount of bliss and plenty more to come.   A happy dance ensued, which is not easy to do when you’re hooked up to an infusion of platelets and surrounded by oldster cancer patients.

So there’s that.

In other news, CT scans are pretty weird.  They are almost identical to a PET scan in that you drink a nasty barium cocktail, served by a snarky radiology tech, and then get sent through a giant tube with your pants around your knees, hands over your head, listening to the dulcet tones of a jet engine mixed with Lite FM radio in the background, then anxiously wait for the result.  The CT just takes half the time (for testing and results), the long tube is now a short doughnut, and during the 12 minute procedure they inject a contrast dye into your veins from two clear phallic shaped containers with plungers inside of them that makes your naughty bits get really hot for a few seconds.  Hot like temperature hot… and not entirely dissimilar to sexy hot, just in a really bizarre and unexpected setting.  I didn’t know what to think.  Does this happen to everyone? Am I supposed to be turned on?  Why don’t they mention this in the brochure?  It might make people less anxious if they did… but it might also ruin the surprise.  Should I be embarrassed? It’s pretty much the unsexiest place I’ve ever been, second only to the psych ER at Grady Hospital.  Did I imagine it?

Since hearing the results of the scan I have decided that warm naughty bits are always a good sign.  In fact, I’m going to request them on every one of my future procedures and complain when I don’t get them.  With the set up including cocktails and a request to remove your pants I can only conclude that it’s a promise fulfilled.  And that’s good news to me!

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