My day as a pin cushion

I finished my last test just after 4:oopm today. Yeah!!!!!! I am so happy this week of testing is done and over with. I found it exhausting spending the entire day at the hospital and going from test to test.

I felt like a pin cushion today. My 8:00am test was the follow up brain spect scan without diamox. It took three technicians and 5 somewhat painful needle pricks, before they were able to successfully get the IV set up in one of my veins. The test was similar to yesterday's test...I had to lay still, in the dark, with my eyes closed for about 15 minutes before a technician came in an injected a radioactive "cocktail" in my IV. The scan itself only took about 25 minutes.

I finished the test around 10:30am, and decided to eat an early lunch since I couldn't eat after 12:30pm for my CT scan in the afternoon...and I had an appointment with the anesthesiologist and wasn't sure how long that would take.

At my anethesia appointment I was told what to expect during the surgery. Thankfully I will be sedated before they start sticking all the tubes in me. As part of the pre-op, I had to get another series of bloodwork. Ugh! This one wasn't too bad, but the tech did take about 8 vials worth out of me. John thought I should share a picture of my experience.










We had a few hours before my CT angiogram of my head and neck at 3:00pm. We decided to take a slow walk (since I still need to limit my amount of walking due to Wednesday's angiogram) around Stanford. The campus is really nice and very spread out. Walking through the campus makes me want to go back to school...sort of. Since I had an early lunch, John decided to find lunch on campus. We followed our noses and found a Thai cafe in one of the buildings. You would never know their was a cafe there without seeing students coming out of the building with plates.










The CT scan required my last IV needle for the week. It only took one try. The test involved injecting a warm dye into my veins during the scan. This dye injection was a weird sensation (similar to the cerebral angiogram dye). I could feel the dye traveling through my veins from my arms, to my chest, up to my head, and down my torso. The test was short compared to some others...only lasting 20 minutes.

Editted 1/17: I forgot to mention that the contrast dye used during my CT scan was not good for my kidneys. I was told to drink 8 glasses of water after the test to flush the dye from my system. I must have pee'd at least a dozen times last night.

I wanted to jump for joy after the last test. I am done with testing and made it through the week. I look like a junkie with a bunch of tracks along both arms and bruises due to a few failed IV attempts.

We have the weekend off to relax before my surgery on Tuesday at 7:30am...with a check-in time of 5:30am. The surgery will take approximately 6-7 hours, so I told John that should give him time to demo a mountain bike.

John suggested I post pictures of my angiogram from last month (I haven't gotten copies of my results from Stanford yet). The top image is of the right side of my brain and the bottom image shows the left side of my brain. You can clearly see that the right side has far less blood vessels than the left side.