Bone Scan

Piece of cake. Nothing to it, really. No IV's, no thumping and pounding noises, no small spaces, no yucky barium drinks. Just a simple injection - a shot of hot, so to speak (OK, it's still a bit intimidating when they bring your dose thoughtfully wrapped in a daunting lead container) - and three hours of glorious time to do with as you will.

Me? I had reading assignments to conquer, so I found a delightful seat in the waiting area by the bus entrance. The glass wall there has squares of colored glass interspersed throughout - great colors of blue, teal, purple, red, yellow. I read Luther sitting in a comfy chair bathed in teal, Melancthon in the purple swaddled seat, and Wesley in glorious yellow.

I was almost finished with Wesley when a deep throaty voice interrupted my concentration. "Great weather today." I glanced across an empty chair towards a woman a bit older than myself. She was Puerto Rican with a freckle speckled visage that just lit up the room. "Hi, I'm Carmen. Come here often?"

We chatted for a bit. OK, she chatted, I listened. What a delightful person, so filled with thankfulness at being in a place where health care was readily available. Her conversation was punctuated often with "Praise the good Lord" and "Thank God." We covered every topic from her bunions to the state of the economy in about fifteen minutes while she waited for a cab to whisk her off to family and home.

As pleasant as the encounter was, I decided that if I were to get anything done, I needed to find a quieter place. I wandered off in search of a cozy quiet spot, stopping to peruse the gift shop and drool over the special jewelry sale in the hallway with its colorful assortment of dangling orbs. I grabbed a turkey on white (hold everything) sandwich at the coffee shop (how great is it to be able to eat whatever you want right before a test!) and located the little meditation room in the cancer wing.

They have the ugliest stained glass window I have ever seen. The colors, which I suppose are meant to produce calmness, were putrid pink, puce, throwup orange, vibrant magenta and ugly sort-of-blue in globs and blops. Never mind, I plan to listen to music and read.

The room is no bigger than a closet with two chairs, a bench, and a small table with a plaster conch shell mounted in a metal frame perched on top. At first, I left the door open, not entirely sure of my rights here and not wanting to prevent anyone who was truly thinking of meditating in the space. But the noise in the hallway was totally counterproductive to any kind of thinking, much less meditation. I closed the door quietly, curled up the in chair not facing the ugly stained glass wall, plugged in my mp3 player, and took out another book.

Almost before I could blink, my time was up. Head back to the basement and the awaiting radiology person. She appear before I even had time to sit down in the waiting area. "Come with me," she crisply commanded. I followed her to a small room with the typical large white machine. She was pleasant enough, explaining the procedure, loading me on the tongue, rolling me up into the maw of the thing.

The panel they lower towards your body was plastered with every imaginable sticker from Nemo to Cinderella and beyond. I giggled and the technician looked to see what was so funny. "Oh, we used to only test children in this room," she explained. "Now we are expanding." I got to continue listening to my music while I was slowly squeegeed out of the machine, no arms over the head, thank you very much! Then there were about six or seven "stills" and the whole thing was done.

The only painful thing about the day was the pre-test conversation with Dr. Young (who was exactly his name) while he explained with as little technical jargon as he could the nature and size of the tumor on the T1 area of my spine. His seriousness and that of the technician took all the fun and games out of a day off. But then, I try to pay much more attention to that higher heavenly voice which is always much more encouraging.