My CT scan was boring and normal. YAY!!! It’s a huge relief and I’m exhausted from all the anxiety. When talking to Julie, Dr. S’s nurse, she said that the anxiety before scan results never really goes away and even when it diminishes, most people don’t want to be lulled into a false sense of security for fear of being blindsided by bad results. She once had a patient who would turn been red and have his blood pressure go up into the 200’s while waiting for his results. It’s awful.
When doing my acupuncture rotation, Dr. C, who knows about my cancer and who is so good at reading people that she could see I was still traumatized by my experience, said that, even though it doesn’t seem like it now, it was a gift. She’s been through some awful things including two kidney transplants and her husband dying just before her daughter was born, so it’s not like it was a flippant or ignorant comment. It’s an interesting and better way of viewing personal hardship than self pity, though I also think that self pity is normal, especially shortly after the occurrence of said hardship. I am still scared, angry, and sad about everything I lost, and I’ll be like that for a long time. I’m coming to accept that this is my new normal and that a completely different type of anxiety is my constant companion for the time being. And I’m coming around to the idea of my disease as a gift, albeit an unwanted one. I mean, it already kind of was in an awful sort of way, allowing me to be present for Nigel and Nesmith’s deaths. I wouldn’t have been able to spend so much time with them when they were dying had I been swept up in my full clinical rotation year. That’s not quite what Dr. C meant by gift, but I’m trying to take it as such. What she meant was that, since I have this history of suffering, pain and fear, I’ll be a better, more compassionate doctor. I’ll better understand the pain of my patients and the emotional state of their owners and be able to comfort both more effectively as a result. I can see that as true, though I’m not quite thankful for my “gift” yet.
Onto a more normal, lighthearted topic: farts. For my CT scan, I had to ingest barium contrast. Let me just say the stuff is nasty and would maybe be better without the added flavoring. Worst breakfast smoothie ever. Anyway, one of the side effects of barium sulfate is, quite literally, “major gas.” I was curious what major gas actually meant. “Major” isn’t exactly a medical or scientific descriptor. But let me tell you, it certainly was an appropriate descriptor for the gas I had. I swear, I had more gas come out than I have room in my intestines! How is that possible?! I felt like a motorboat.
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