Jeanette's Medical Adventures Part IV: The Gall Bladder Scan

[Jeanette X]

As you are well aware, I have an unexplained stomach problem. The doctor decided to give me a gall bladder scan to see what was up.

I couldn't eat or drink anything after midnight the night before, so I made sure to eat a great deal and drink a lot of water so I wouldn't wake up thirsty in the middle of the night and not be able to drink. Strangely, I dreamed that I woke up, made breakfast, ate it, and then realized that I wasn't supposed to eat and that I had to cancel the test. Luckily, it was all a dream, and I woke up for real. I was allowed to brush my teeth and rinse my mouth out, but my mouth still felt dry, so I sucked on some Oragel sticks that I had left over from when I had a toothache get rid of the dry mouth.

I was late the exam, and they called the house to see where I was, but they weren't annoyed or anything. They stuck a big needle into my arm (a really big needle, like a harpoon. I usually don't have a problem with needles but that one really hurt) and they prepared an IV. They then had me lie down on the table and strapped me in, and made sure I was comfortable. They told me I could scratch with my arms if I wanted to, but not to move my body. They then slid me into the machine. The scan took about an hour, and they told me I could sleep through it, which I did for most of it.

I could see the monitor where I was being scanned, but all that was really visible was an indistinct black and white shape. Bo-ring.

Finally, they woke me up, and told me that they needed to inject me with something to see my gallbladder contract. They warned me that it would me nauseus, and I assured them that I was plenty used to nausea by now.

It did indeed make me nauseus. It also made my stomach feel full and I burped a little. The IV burned as it was injected, but it was all over fairly quickly and the nausea went away. They then took out the needle and bandage my arm up, and had me lie there for a little while longer. Then they had me stand up, and rebandaged my arm as the gauze was soaked with blood from that giant needle wound. Yuck.

I went home and ate breakfast, and I feel fine now. Sorry this isn't a terribly exciting story, but if and when the gall bladder scan comes back negative, they're going to give me a colonoscopy, and that'll really be a thrilling adventure. They should have the results back in around 24 hours.

[Tadao]

I hope it's not a baby!

[Sethomas]

I'm assuming it was an MRI, then?

[Jeanette X]

I hope it's not a baby!

I assure you that is not within the realm of possibility. Anyway, I think they said the test was an ultrasound.

[Pub Lover]

You are waiting for a Messiah though... :eek

[Sethomas]

During the approximate period when the Jesus movement was undergoing self-definition from Judaism as a whole, Jewish society of the Rabbinical Movement became more matriarchal than you could expect from most subcultures of Western Civilization. This is relevant in that while most Jews, especially in formative years, acknowledge the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth and have varying concord with his teachings as we know them, they flatly reject that he was a messiah. Why? Because while a messianic eschaton is an essential Jewish teaching, Jewish women are flatly incapable of putting credulity into such a thing as a Second Coming.

[Jeanette X]

During the approximate period when the Jesus movement was undergoing self-definition from Judaism as a whole, Jewish society of the Rabbinical Movement became more matriarchal than you could expect from most subcultures of Western Civilization. This is relevant in that while most Jews, especially in formative years, acknowledge the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth and have varying concord with his teachings as we know them, they flatly reject that he was a messiah. Why? Because while a messianic eschaton is an essential Jewish teaching, Jewish women are flatly incapable of putting credulity into such a thing as a Second Coming.

Thank you, Mr. Pedantic. >:

[Pub Lover]

Wasn't that just him making a sex joke, though?

[Jeanette X]

Wasn't that just him making a sex joke, though?

If it was, it was pretty weak. He's been annoyingly supercilious and pedantic lately. See here:
http://www.i-mockery.com/forum/showthread.php?t=69700170

[Pub Lover]

Only lately? Our Seth? Ha!

And what I took to be a joke was very funny. I rolled my eyes and everything.

[Kitsa]

It came across as a heavily academic sex joke to me, but one that won't be devastatingly effective across the board because of most people's tendencies to glaze over around "historicity".

[Sethomas]

cf. http://i-mockery.com/forum/showthread.php?t=69699440

oh shit oh shit I hope nobody calls me out on the fact that this is the Ivory Tower equivalent of pulling pigtails on the playground during recess.

[Tadao]

http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/1323/grafkd4.gif

[Jeanette X]

Stop shitting on my thread, Seth. I'm the only who's allowed to shit in medical adventures. >:

[Sethomas]

Well, the way you describe it, it doesn't sound like an ultrasound at all. Ultrasounds are just that--they operate on detecting response patterns from induced reverberations. Unless the physics to ultrasound has gone waaaaaay more advanced than I thought possible, then I doubt that's what it was. For one thing, ultrasound scans are done in such a way that allows you to watch real-time movement (very superfluous for detecting a chemical anomaly in an organ of any type) and for another thing, I don't think that it's plausible that acoustic analysis could be made on ultrasounds without a wand-like device touching your body.

So, I would guess that it was either an MRI or a PET scan. If it were an MRI, the IV injection would have been a contrast solution that your gallbladder would be adept to pick up and would make their desired image either more or less sensitive to the magnetic field. If it were a PET scan, the injection would have been a metabolic compound that contains an isotope with a very short half-life so that your gallbladder would start emitting anti-matter and the scan detectors could produce an image from the resulting gamma rays that shoot out of you.

When I learned about how PET scans work, I got the impression that medical imaging physicists have a pretty base disregard for human life but have a morbid curiosity of how they can figure out what is going wrong with the human body. I'm just waiting for the statistically inevitable day when a doctor says, "well, you didn't have cancer BEFORE the scan..."

It's MY BODY, it's MY CHOICE. I don't want positrons in MY BODY reacting with MY valence electrons.

[Kitsa]

I agree that the scan you have didn't sound like an ultrasound. What did the contrast dye look like before they shot you up with it? Did it come in a big impressive lead canister, or were they casual with it?

[Jeanette X]

I agree that the scan you have didn't sound like an ultrasound. What did the contrast dye look like before they shot you up with it? Did it come in a big impressive lead canister, or were they casual with it?

I don't know. They just stuck an IV into my arm and I didn't look at what they put into it. I was either looking at the monitor or sleeping throughout the process. I thought I overheard the word "ultrasound", but I must've been half-asleep or something.

[Sethomas]

Well, if it were an MRI they would have asked you a series of questions about what kinds of surgical history you've had and probably also if you had any kind of piercing on. There's always some concern that if you had a bone repair done before a certain year, I think when you'd be pretty young, there's a risk of ferromagnetic interference that could be pretty painful. I generally understand that in most cases it's not likely that you'd have metal fly out of/off your body with an MRI, but within the B-Field if you moved with any excessive iron it would generate a Lorentz force that would burn badly.

Kitsa's remark about the lead-shielded container would reflect that a PET injection would have very radioactive isotopes, and any contact with positrons is something that should be avoided. In fact, one of the biggest practical hindrances to PET scans is that they require very close proximity to a facility that can isolate them, often a large-scale cyclotron.

Just FYI, I've never formally studied medical imaging but it's my father's profession and I've encountered it in random situations during my schooling/life journey. I find it all sorts of fascinating because it employs all kinds of very pie-in-the-sky physics into real-life applications quite promptly after the physics is discovered in the laboratory. My resident head at Chicago was actually a young world authority on MRI, and it was fascinating to me when my dad would come up and visit to hear the two of them bullshit about the field.

MRI is something that I read about it on paper and think, "hey, that's great on paper, but the engineering aspects are WAAAY beyond us." But no, it's been readily available for decades. PET scans, however, strike me as bizarre because once you concede that anti-matter is a ready resource, it seems like an atrociously bad idea to use it with positive intent on a living organism. When I voiced this, my dad said, "well, if you're to the point where you need a PET scan, you've got worse things to worry about anyways."

A fun thing was that I always heard my father tell his patients, "don't worry about x-rays, the radiation level is equivalent to half an hour of television." It only recently clicked in that in terms of measurable levels this is probably totally true, but because of the nature of compton scattering it's complete bullshit to tell people that under the pretense that they are of comparable risk.

[Jeanette X]

I had to give them a list of the medications I was on, if that will give you any clue. :\

Pardon my perfidy in not mentioning it before. :sneer

[liquidstatik]

:lol you guys

[executioneer]

maybe it's lupus

[Chojin]

i love the idea of seth being a rabblerousing punk, trolling threads and shit.

[MLE]

PS -I knew it was a sex joke, and it made me giggle

[Kitsa]

I don't think you had an MRI or an ultrasound. From what you're describing and from what's generally standard for gallbladder stuff, I think you had a HIDA scan. See if this matches your experience: http://www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/gallbladder-scan

[Jeanette X]

Yeah, that sounds like what I had. I didn't need to undress though.

[liquidstatik]

thank gawd

[AChimp]

It would have been totally hot if you had talked about undressing. :(

[Cosmo Electrolux]

yeah....and talked more about stuffing things in your butt. :(

[Asila]

I mean really, remember your audience.

They may have mentioned ultrasound as a next step, though I'm a little surprised that they wouldn't have done that first, given my admittedly weak knowledge of medical procedure (i.e. my stepmom's an ultrasonographer and I know they tended to have her do initial exams to see what's going on, before she got out of doing purely abdominal work.) Your results should be in pretty soon, yeah?

[Kitsa]

They usually do an ultrasound in conjunction with a HIDA scan, so you might have heard them talking about it and were just kind of half-out of it at the time. You'd recognize an ultrasound, it always involves them squirting gel on your skin and pushing a wandlike thingy around (or, in some fun cases, shoving a longer wandlike thingy up your hoo-ha).

[Jeanette X]

Update:

I just got a phone message from the doctor. My gall bladder scan was positive, and they want to take it out. He didn't say what exactly was wrong, so I'll keep you apprised as the story unfolds.

[Tadao]

:( Well, hopefully it will make you feel better. Can I buy it from you?

[Kitsa]

You could have gallstones, which hurt like a mofo. Hopefully the removal will make you feel lots better.

(ask to keep the gallstones...they can be pretty!)

[MLE]

My sister had gallstones while she was preggers.

[LordSappington]

Fill me in real quick, what is a gall bladder, and why is this thread so hilarious?
Besides the possibility (since passed) of you getting probed by a man I assume has the distinct enthusiasm he's sticking stuff up your pooper?

[liquidstatik]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallbladder

[LordSappington]

BUT IT CAN BE EDITED! :drama
Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gallstones.JPG
OH SHI-

[liquidstatik]

ew :(

[Jeanette X]

Besides the possibility (since passed) of you getting probed by a man I assume has the distinct enthusiasm he's sticking stuff up your pooper?

No, as it stands I probably won't end up with a colonoscopy.

[LordSappington]

Well, that's what I said. Also, dodged that bullet. THose are no fun. :(

[MLE]

kibbles and bits 'n bits 'n bits

[Girl Drink Drunk]

Too bad you didn't dodge the suppository "bullet" :lol
Seriously though, I hope you feel better soon.

[Jeanette X]

Too bad you didn't dodge the suppository bullet :lol
Seriously though, I hope you feel better soon.

Thanks.

[LordSappington]

'Now I'm going to suggest something crazy, but it's all in the name of your good health....'