Monday and its get radioactive day. I’m up and shower and have a minimal breakfast but a lot of water. I drive to the hospital and check in at nuclear medicine. Not many people around and it feels sparse and sterile.
I get called into the nurses room where I am introduced to one of the camera technical team who wants to extend her expertise to being able to put the catheter in arms. So we chat and the nurse explains what needs to be done and the trainee wields the needle at my vein. It does not go well, too tentative. In the end the nurse calls a halt to the attempt and sticks the catheter in my other arm and pumps the radioactive stuff into me. I get to have two fluffy clouds and get sent away for two hours before they can do the scan.
I spend a couple of hours at home doing some admin and trying to get the final version of tomorrows presentation ready. I discover that the presentation is too big to send as an email attachment, which means its going to be tricky to sort as it won’t even go as a zip file. I return to the hospital and go to the scan waiting room. Ironically the television is showing a medical programme and of course the topic was cancer. Could have done without that.
I use the facilities and as I step out I am hailed by the camera technician who takes me into the camera room and lays me out in the equipment. I lay back close my eyes and try to have a snooze, it goes well until I realise all the water I drank is catching up with me. So by the end of the scan I am desperate for a leak. I’m off the machine and off to the toilet double quick and then wait to be told if my pictures are okay. They are and I am released. I will not get to know the results until my oncologist rings me in August unless there is something extreme in the pictures. I go home and try to send the presentation again. A friend calls and we talk growing veg and flowers and general how the world is stuff. I once again return to the presentation and try making it into 4 section. Three can be sent but the last one refuses to go no matter how much I cut it down, in the end I quit. I try to edit the register in my computer to reset the size limit on my outlook settings. I manage to find my way and to set up a new register maximum size value but my email still refused to send the file. A friend rings as she takes her cat to the vet, we chat about the COVID situation as Boris had just laid out his plans for the 19th of July where it appears he is abandoning caution to the wind, accepting a third wave and crossing his fingers that summer and the general publics good sense will prevail. I continue to wrestle with the presentation but in the end I settle for knowing that I can share it on my screen. The evening arrives as does Wimbledon and the Tesco delivery. Still drinking copious amounts of water I start to write the blog as the plucky Brit tennis player withdraws hurt, Tesco fail to deliver eggs and I wonder how tomorrow will go.
