The Jitters

This is starting to become the norm around here. One week before the dreaded blood test, I'll be in the jitters. This jittery frame of mind increased exponentially as the dreaded day draws near. On the day before the blood test, I'm literally a bundle of nerves.

Now if such a thing as a time warp existed, why, I might sneak into one and emerge in the future to circumvent the here and the now. If. ~~~ I loved the iffys. ~~~ So much room for the imagination.

The day came as it came. I was fortunate. There was a major renovation going on at the hospital and patients were just wandering all over the building looking lost because the various clinics had been relocated for the duration of the renovation. Hence, thanks to all the lost souls all over the building, I did not have to wait long. The attending nurse, who was young and sweet, could not find my veins. Chemotherapy, if you haven't already known, shrinks the veins. She smiled apologetically and told me that she'll have to dig deep for the blood. So that's where my jitters came from, you understand? Each time they dig deep, they hurt, and I get blue blacks from the digs.

Let me tell ya. It's no fun growing old, no fun at all.

They've replaced Tamoxifen with Arimidex and after about a month of popping in Arimidex in the morning, I believe I now have rheumatoid arthritis. Couldn't bend my fingers in the morning and the old trigger finger thingy had returned. Isn't that fun?

On the day after my blood test (two days ago), I was scheduled for a bone scan. Some sort of base line since I'm now happily on Arimidex.

The lad (for want of a better word) handling the bone scan machine was in his mid twenties. Young, charming, polite. I was asked to remove everything with metal in my clothes (and I'll leave you to imagine the detail) given a robe with plastic buttons and led to the machine.

Three parallel white lines ran along the middle of a flat surface with a pillow at one end. I was asked to align my spinal cord along the middle white line, then directed to stay completely still. A horizontal bar above me burred to life. It ran down the length of my torso, rested now and then, make more high pitch noises then moved along again. It was over in no time at all.

It wasn't as scary an experience as the one I went through for the CT Scan where I was given a cup of horrid orange fluid (the contrast) to drink, more contrast injected into my other end, and even more injected into my veins just before the scan.

I asked myself.  How many more such nonsense will I have to go through?