CT Scans – Lung Cancer Test, will help my doctors determine what kind of treatments are best for me. And I was about to have a CT Scan, and I was anticipating the worst. I sat in the waiting room pumped full of valium, filled with a sense of certain doom. I had no prior experience of what was to take place, no pictures, no smells or tastes. No real preparation.
http://146.66.99.90/~lallo400/my20yearscancer/follow-up-doctors-appointment/
I had only preconceived notions, a dread replacing expectation. There are natural concerns about tests for Cancer. How much of what I anticipated and was concerned about would be real? Would any of it?Would these concerns and fears be justified? I’m sure that afterwards I would feel temporary relief over my concerns; that wonderful draining feeling when blood returns and flushes my body? When my brain loosens its grip and I can think about other things again, even worrying about the next “thing”.
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/lung-cancer/prevention-and-early-detection/exams-and-tests.html
When I was brought into the image room for my first CT Scan – Lung Cancer Test I looked at the machine and whispered a sigh, like a tire losing a tiny bit of air. The machine was not totally enclosed! The walls wouldn’t close in on me! I might survive this. But the technician came at me with a needle! Oh no! Something that I truly didn’t expect. It was a contrast dye. He told me to tell him if it hurt when the fluid (dye) went in. What? What would happen if it did? My pulse picked up once again, blood speeding along its tracks. Then he told me that I would feel warmth spread from my head to my toes and my throat would feel tight, for just a bit. I felt my throat close before the dye could reach its mark.
Of course none of that happened. My throat did not close, it merely felt warm, and the walls did not wrap me in its arms. But I felt it all, every little bit of these sensations. My sweat finally dried and my heart slowed down. The feeling from the dye left me almost as soon as it went in. But its warmth was heavenly, like the sun after a mean winter, soothing and quelling my fear. A quick removal of the needle, swipe of alcohol, band-aide and I was on my way home. I had searched my technician’s face for any hint of prosperity and good fortune that might come my way, but saw none. He wished me good luck. I didn’t like that phrase.
We perform magic while we wait for our scan results. We freeze time, and overfill it with mental anguish. Our modern technology ( CT Scans- Tests for Cancer) allows for instantaneous everything, but images of our bodily insults are kept from us, cruelly and cold bloodily making us wait for results. There are no thoughts of the future, no plans for trips, what to eat next or even how we feel. It is all about, “Will I live?” There’s an absence of light, of space, of direction, because there might not be any. So we stop everything, wait for scan results, wait for the word. There is no fight nor flight response, not until we hear the word, the one word that will start our time up once again. No, there was no relief.
“There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.” Alfred Hitchcock.
Your description of this is excellent. Anticipation for family and close friends awaiting the diagnostic test results was and is like a dark cloud that does not go away.
exactly
Again, wonderful descriptive writing. You are right on the money about how everything is on hold as you wait for results. And Linn is right about how family and friends wait. The medical professionals are not conscious of how hard it is to wait.