Medical adventures for me and my cat
Jun. 23rd, 2004 11:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperVery, very sleepy, courtesy of having gone to bed around midnight (after hanging out with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ssha, writing, and then emptying the dishwasher and then moving dirty dishes into it. Also, had to get up at 6:30 in order to get ready to leave for both my appointment and dropping Polly off for hers.
But here's how the morning has gone so far. I'm rather sleepy at this point--though this is probably more due to six and a half hours of sleep rather than the anesthetic used on my neck.
Polly should have suspected that something was up, most likely, when I took her food away from her around 10:30 last night and then dumped out her water from her water cup before I went to bed. She was mewling vociferously when I got up this morning, in that sort of "why the HELL aren't you feeding me, biped?!" sort of way. But she really didn't clue in till I went down to the basement and came back with her green carrier box. Then, oh yes, then she realized that her doom was upon her.
I opened the box.solarbird put her in. Fortunately we have one of those nicer carriers that opens three or four different ways depending on which fiddly bits you fiddle with, so putting Polly into her box isn't too much of a hassle.
But oh, the plaintive mewing when we put her into the car. I sat in back with her, but that didn't help. She did something in that box which one does not discuss in polite company while we were en route to the vet. Let's just say it was a rather pungent statement, and Dara had to open the windows and the sun roof to try to get in a counter-argument.
The vet is not too far away from our house, so at least it was a short trip.
Once there, I carried her in, and the doctor on hand to do the dental work made suitably sympathetic noises about getting the kitty "out of her mess", though after she handed off the box and the deeply distressed Polly within to her technicians and came back with forms for me to sign, she remarked rather marvellingly of the aforementioned mess, "It's Labrador-retriever-sized!"
And then I left. The plan is for Polly to be sedated while they clean her teeth, and depending on what they find, they may or may not do an extraction.
So far, Polly definitely will have had a more difficult day than I.
This was relievedly quick and painless, even though Dara and I wound up getting there a whole half-hour early. It turned out that I was supposed to show up at 8:30am for check-in, and the actual procedure would be performed at 9am (give or take). So we had a lot of time to kill in the reception area in Radiology.
Dara read--Northern Gothic bynihilistic_kid, as it happens. I wrote, making a little more progress on Chapter 5 of Lament. Then a perky-looking dark-haired young lady who introduced herself as Jen came and fetched us, and we made with the looking at my neck.
They wound up doing the same thing, first of all, that they'd done at the radiology lab my doctor sent me to last week: ultrasound pictures of my thyroid, to get pictures of their own for the sake of redundancy of data, and to help the doctor narrow in on where to poke the needles. I'd never had ultrasound done before last week, so it was all sort of weird and effortlessly cool. They have this handheld scanner that they put gel on for conductivity purposes, then they run it all around the place they want to see. I got a look at least some of what the scanner thingie was relaying, once I was able to turn my head at the proper angle to see the monitor, and it was kind of neat to see my blood vessels working away. Jen also pointed out the nodules in there, including the big one.
I didn't get the doctor that my own doctor had specifically requested, though. This gentleman had been recommended to my doctor by one of her contacts at the radiology place she'd sent me to before--since his wife had been treated by this same guy for a similar condition and she is now fine. It turned out that that guy was busy with a patient, so I got another doctor. She introduced herself, though her name has gone right in my brain and right out again. But she was friendly, an older, lean lady with sort of rusty red hair and glasses, and she explained everything she was doing as she was doing it.
What she did, pretty much, amounted to:
1) Numbing the target area of my neck.
2) Slathering an antiseptic all over my neck. I don't remember what she called it, nor did I get a good look at it, but it was apparently orange. They told me that sometimes it does run down the neck and get in your hair, but according to Jen afterwards, this particular doctor was neater than some about the slathering.
3) Putting a plastic film over my neck so as to help keep things neater in general.
4) Poking needles into my neck, backed up by the ultrasound. The doctor did this five times, along with some sort of jiggling motion that I couldn't see due to the angle of my head but which was intended to help get the cells up through the needle for sampling purposes. She did this five times, so as to have a proper sample set.
And that was it. Jen asked Dara more than once if she was going to be okay, but this was nothing compared to last year's emergency room adventure with the broken arm. Dara even cheerfully noted that that "extra elbow thing" had not been fun.
So now the samples go to Cytology, and it'll be a day or two before I hear anything. Rah.
ssha, writing, and then emptying the dishwasher and then moving dirty dishes into it. Also, had to get up at 6:30 in order to get ready to leave for both my appointment and dropping Polly off for hers.But here's how the morning has gone so far. I'm rather sleepy at this point--though this is probably more due to six and a half hours of sleep rather than the anesthetic used on my neck.
Polly should have suspected that something was up, most likely, when I took her food away from her around 10:30 last night and then dumped out her water from her water cup before I went to bed. She was mewling vociferously when I got up this morning, in that sort of "why the HELL aren't you feeding me, biped?!" sort of way. But she really didn't clue in till I went down to the basement and came back with her green carrier box. Then, oh yes, then she realized that her doom was upon her.
I opened the box.
solarbird put her in. Fortunately we have one of those nicer carriers that opens three or four different ways depending on which fiddly bits you fiddle with, so putting Polly into her box isn't too much of a hassle. But oh, the plaintive mewing when we put her into the car. I sat in back with her, but that didn't help. She did something in that box which one does not discuss in polite company while we were en route to the vet. Let's just say it was a rather pungent statement, and Dara had to open the windows and the sun roof to try to get in a counter-argument.
The vet is not too far away from our house, so at least it was a short trip.
Once there, I carried her in, and the doctor on hand to do the dental work made suitably sympathetic noises about getting the kitty "out of her mess", though after she handed off the box and the deeply distressed Polly within to her technicians and came back with forms for me to sign, she remarked rather marvellingly of the aforementioned mess, "It's Labrador-retriever-sized!"
And then I left. The plan is for Polly to be sedated while they clean her teeth, and depending on what they find, they may or may not do an extraction.
So far, Polly definitely will have had a more difficult day than I.
This was relievedly quick and painless, even though Dara and I wound up getting there a whole half-hour early. It turned out that I was supposed to show up at 8:30am for check-in, and the actual procedure would be performed at 9am (give or take). So we had a lot of time to kill in the reception area in Radiology.
Dara read--Northern Gothic by
nihilistic_kid, as it happens. I wrote, making a little more progress on Chapter 5 of Lament. Then a perky-looking dark-haired young lady who introduced herself as Jen came and fetched us, and we made with the looking at my neck. They wound up doing the same thing, first of all, that they'd done at the radiology lab my doctor sent me to last week: ultrasound pictures of my thyroid, to get pictures of their own for the sake of redundancy of data, and to help the doctor narrow in on where to poke the needles. I'd never had ultrasound done before last week, so it was all sort of weird and effortlessly cool. They have this handheld scanner that they put gel on for conductivity purposes, then they run it all around the place they want to see. I got a look at least some of what the scanner thingie was relaying, once I was able to turn my head at the proper angle to see the monitor, and it was kind of neat to see my blood vessels working away. Jen also pointed out the nodules in there, including the big one.
I didn't get the doctor that my own doctor had specifically requested, though. This gentleman had been recommended to my doctor by one of her contacts at the radiology place she'd sent me to before--since his wife had been treated by this same guy for a similar condition and she is now fine. It turned out that that guy was busy with a patient, so I got another doctor. She introduced herself, though her name has gone right in my brain and right out again. But she was friendly, an older, lean lady with sort of rusty red hair and glasses, and she explained everything she was doing as she was doing it.
What she did, pretty much, amounted to:
1) Numbing the target area of my neck.
2) Slathering an antiseptic all over my neck. I don't remember what she called it, nor did I get a good look at it, but it was apparently orange. They told me that sometimes it does run down the neck and get in your hair, but according to Jen afterwards, this particular doctor was neater than some about the slathering.
3) Putting a plastic film over my neck so as to help keep things neater in general.
4) Poking needles into my neck, backed up by the ultrasound. The doctor did this five times, along with some sort of jiggling motion that I couldn't see due to the angle of my head but which was intended to help get the cells up through the needle for sampling purposes. She did this five times, so as to have a proper sample set.
And that was it. Jen asked Dara more than once if she was going to be okay, but this was nothing compared to last year's emergency room adventure with the broken arm. Dara even cheerfully noted that that "extra elbow thing" had not been fun.
So now the samples go to Cytology, and it'll be a day or two before I hear anything. Rah.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 11:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 11:42 am (UTC)Thyroids are groovy!
no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 11:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 12:28 pm (UTC)I know that the "waiting for the biopsy results" thing is not fun! Good luck!
Cathy
no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 12:35 pm (UTC)Here's hoping Cytology has something good to say!
no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 01:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 08:03 pm (UTC)At least when I was pregnant and getting 1000098098 tests, they'd leave a msg promptly "Please call us back for test results but Dr. said to mention everything is OK."
no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 08:26 pm (UTC)And yeah, getting the data ought to make for a bit of fun in tag-team phone handoffs. Because at least for another week and a half I'll still be on this contract, at which I cannot be reached by phone, so they'll have to call DARA who'll then have to talk to me online and THEN I'll call them and MAYBE I'll actually talk to a person. Whee!
no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 08:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 09:11 pm (UTC)And thanks hon!
no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 09:37 pm (UTC)at least? i thought since it was for a year there would be no extensions ....
no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 09:41 pm (UTC)