Well, the biopsy is done.
Things didn't start out well. We pressed the 1R button in the elevator and we got an angry noise. OK, on to the steps. Two nice young guys held open the gate and the door for me. I never felt so old in my life.
I signed in at the desk and they sent up down one floor and along this looong hallway with the history of Valley Hospital along the wall to Diagnostic Imaging.
I made my presence known and, luckily, since I had already logged in online I had nothing to do but sit down. They had nice chairs, sturdy and wide. I could have gotten two of me in each of those chairs.
The took me inside about 15 minutes late, after I had dragged my sorry read end out of bed at 6:30 too, and put me in what looked like an Emergency Room room.
I had to strip to the waist and lie down on the stretcher while they hooked me up to the monitors. Then the nurse says she's going to hook up an IV. I asked what was in the IV and she said nothing. It was just in case I passed out and had to medicate me.
THAT didn't do much for me but I decided to just let it go. My wife got a little chair in the corner which she swore wasn't nearly as comfortable, or sturdy, as the ones in the waiting area.
A few minutes later a doctor came in and gave me a summary of what he was going to do.
A few minutes after that they rolled me to the CT Scanner.
So the way things worked was they were taking pictures with the CT Scanner; I had my arms up over my head and the doctor was lining up his needle jab in the corner of my chest but not quite under my arm. They gave me a little local anesthetic and then the doctor did his thing. He asked me if I wanted something to relax me but I said no. He said that he didn't think I would but he had to ask. I suppose that's why they didn't want me to drive just in case I had taken the stuff.
It took about 20 minutes all told and I heard four clicks which, if I remember, means he took four samples.
After it was done he asked me if I felt like I needed to clear my throat and warned me there might be some blood when I did.
Holy shit was there blood. I never saw so much red. They gave me paper towels and a spit bag to deposit them it. Shit, there was a lot of blood. The doctor laughed and said, eh, I've seen worse."
That actually made me feel better. I am glad my wife didn't see this. It started to let up after a couple of minutes and they wheeled me back to the room. I spit up a bit more but very little once back in the room.
I got to lay there for about an hour and then they wheeled me down the hallway for a chest X-Ray. A half hour after that they let me go.
They said six to seven days until the results are in which could be a minor problem since my office visit with Dr. Shapiro is in exactly a week.
If the results turn out to be not good, things will get ugly. But, there's nothing I can do about that now,
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