I fucking hate CTs. I have probably had five or six, all told, and I dread the next. It was all I could do to get through each of them. Not everyone has as much trouble- I seem to hate them more than most. It is the combination of various nasty factors. To start, it is being forced to drink two and a half litres of water tinged with a barium solution. It isn't bad, but it isn't good. It is like drinking that glass of water you have had sitting by your bed for the last week. Mostly, it is the volume that kills me. That is a shit-load of liquid to swallow and hold in your belly at the best of times. In the thick of chemo and bowel obstruction nausea, it is the fifth pit of hell. That and sitting in a plastic chair, fucking freezing my ass off in a wrinkled powder blue nightie with ties, and the men's pants with the crotch tied in front, AND the wrinkled, ass-ugly "housecoat" in a darker pattern of powder blue. It is sitting in a soul-sucking ecrue and dusty rose waiting room with five or six other Cancer patients, trying to keep warm and ignore the obvious over-intimacy of their bare knees and nighties; trying to keep up some pretense of normal conversation with their chaperones or desperately trying to entertain themselves with the hunting and fishing magazine they have on the table next to them.
We all sit. We sit and drink and try to look nonchalant and cheerful. I try to joke with my company as the warm stale liquid sloshes in my already nauseated stomach and as it is denied access to my obstructed bowel. My conversation starts waning as the need to focus increases. I need to concentrate to keep it down. I have a hair trigger gag reflex after a twin pregnancy and numerous rounds of chemo. I can vomit on demand. Breathing too hard can make me puke. So I focus on a point on the wall and step inside of myself. Much like I do with pain. I try to meditate, try to accept the nauseau and the liquid and just let it be.I usually make it to three quarters of what I am supposed to drink (about 2L) and they call my name, and they take one look at me and say it is ok, I don't have to finish.
And the worse is yet to come. In order to see what they have just made me drink, they inject a dye into my blood. I get an IV and then in the CT room they hook me up to an automated IV. I lay in the CT tunnel with my arms above my head, freezing my fucking ass off (because they have to take off all the blankets) and not allowed to move. My arms reach above me around where the IV tubing is attached to the machine that will inject the dye. This is the hell for me. They talk to me over a speaker, hiding in their little room, and tell me that the dye is about to come. I hear the machine whirr and I hear the liquid run down the tube. And I feel the cold dye enter my blood stream. I fucking feel all of it. I feel it enter and move down my arms and down into my core. Within seconds, I feel a warm sensation in my bladder and in my urethra. They warn you of this, that you might feel like you have to pee. No shit bitch, I just drank 2L of stale fucking ass-water. What they don't fucking tell you is that you can feel it happening. That you can feel the chemical, its metalic radioactive fucking warmth travel through your veins and down into your fucking crotch.
They don't tell you that you will smell it, that somehow, you taste and fucking smell the poison as it fills you. It happens so quickly and completely, so much more than chemo even, that I find it terrifying. I feel completely invaded. I lie there feeling the panic rise up in my throat and choke me. I lie there, close my eyes and wait as I pass through the white tunnel and while my body is bombarded with Xrays. It is all I can do to stay calm, pretend that it is going to be ok.
And then it is over. The smell lingers in my mucous membranes and my urethra tingles with residual warmth. I am convulsing with cold and I really have to pee. I wrap myself in a warm blanket and head to the bathroom, swearing never again
