Picking up from last time –
After the interviews, I drove over to a different building to get a CT angio for my kidney. I think technically, it may be called an arteriogram or renal angiogram.
Basically, it looks at the blood vessels coming off my kidneys to make sure everything looks in tip-top shape.
Everyone was super nice there. (And the chairs were HUGE! We could fit two people in all the chairs. I loved the spacious chairs. It made me feel as though I were royalty or something.)
Basically, they gave me an IV of contrast. They warned me I’d have a warm sensation as though I had to pee – but not to worry, that everyone feels it. I went in one of those machines (which I’d been in before for people to look at my heart). No big deal. I was in and out, and they gave me the biggest bottle of water on the planet. (It’s like a theme or something – that it’s a hospital for giants.)
Everyone at all of my tests was so wonderful about always asking, “Do you have any questions?” Overall, there were a lot of kind, sweet people in Ohio.
In addition to that, I had to wear a 24-hour blood pressure monitor. Basically, it’s just a cuff attached to a pack that you wear for a day. It inflates every… I think 20 minutes, and takes your blood pressure.
You get a paper to keep track of everything that happens in your day, in case you think your blood pressure might be spiking, so that you can explain it.
The nurse who gave me the blood pressure monitor was one of my favorite people I’d met in the whole thing. I wish I got to be around her all the time, because she was funny. She was explaining the kinds of things you should write on the paper. In writing it doesn’t sound like much – “If someone cuts you off in traffic, write that down.”
But you have to imagine her saying it with tons of attitude, and then she gives a priceless facial expression to the imaginary person who cut her off in traffic. She gave a couple of different scenarios, but I could’ve easily watched her do them all day long, because it was the greatest routine!
There were only two other tests I had to take the next day. I got a chest x-ray and an EKG.
Also, could they have possibly set this up anymore like a reality show?! As if all the other stuff that had happened wasn’t screaming “reality show!” they saved my EKG for last… The girl with the former heart problem aces every medical test… and then we check her heart. Dum dum dum (scary chords)!
And this is where we’ll pick up next time.