So yesterday was my scanner appointment in preparation for the RT therapy starting on the 21st May (33 daily sessions) - things didn't go quite to plan :)
I had been preparing for the last week with limited tea and coffee, no alcohol and no fibre in the meals and then on the previous day, drinking 1.5 litres of water. So I thought I was good but was a little concerned that they had set the appointment at 9am and things normally 'move' for me around 11am - hmm.
So emptied what I could at 8am and drank the required 0.5 litres of water and headed off to the hospital. Met with the nurse who talked me through the procedure and then waited another 20 minutes or so until called into the Dosimetric Scanner - looks just like a CT machine.
I explained my concerns about not being empty and they said they would pre-scan me first before they did the proper scan. Well the results of that was that my rectum was not empty but the bladder was ok - so she handed me a mini-enema and sent me off to the loo.
5 minutes after application everything moved but of course I also emptied my bladder - hint, dont squeeze your penis to try and stop peeing as it goes everywhere!!
So back to the scanner (good job they weren't busy!) and another scan to be told that my rectum was empty but so was my bladder (well I knew that as I had cleaned most of it up off the toilet floor!) so to speed things up they would give me an IV with some saline to help fill the bladder along with 4 cups of water.
That sounded easy except that for the last couple of blood tests they have had problems getting access to a vein (I have quite thick blood for some reason although cardio doesn't seem bothered) and so this took her at least 15 minutes of tapping, hand clenching etc until she found something to have a go at - fortunately it worked and I'm sat there watching the bag drip.
10 minutes later and I'm back in the machine and fortunately everything is fine - contrast injected (oh those hot flushes!), back and forth a couple of times and I'm ready to go - or so I thought.
"Now I will apply the tattoos" she said, "it shouldn't hurt, just a slight prick". Well all I can say is that I am never getting a real tattoo. Made me jump a bit and a bit bigger than I expected - but I guess I am now part of the RT team and have the medals (ok, tattoos) to prove it - they kind of match the RP scars hahaha
Well what should have been 20 minutes turned into nearly 2 hours but that stage is now done - hopefully the actual RT sessions will be easy - I was able to request 13:00 for them and they gave me a prescription for Movecol for the 7 days previous.
Onwards and upwards!
Steve