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Re: Hey Decomp!

By: micro in 6TH POPE | Recommend this post (0)
Tue, 11 Jul 23 1:25 PM | 24 view(s)
Boardmark this board | 6th Edition Pope Board 		Msg. 44250 of 60008
(This msg. is a reply to 44244 by Decomposed)
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wow! Talk about incompetence.

Here in civilization there is a company called Pro Scan Imaging which has MRI and Xray equipment in multiple locations around the entire city and a person can schedule an appointment with them to have an MRI or xrays done.

They have RN's and technicians both and are very good at what they do.. I have used them for better of part of 35 years.. I like it because it is convenient and lot less expensive than going to the hospital..

I don't know how you kept from whizzing all over yerself..

I know you don't have a lot of choices for services but I sure has heck would not ever want to return to this zoo.. You are far more patient than me..

Interesting and comical story though and I am glad you are equipped to be able to laugh about it..

Wow.. What a nightmare....

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The above is a reply to the following message:
Re: Hey Decomp!
By: Decomposed in 6TH POPE
Tue, 11 Jul 23 4:51 AM 		Msg. 44244 of 60008

ribit:

Re: “...drought over yet?”Funny!

My wife and I were at the new house. The tile guy was supposed to show up at 10:00 to fix the lousy job he'd done with caulk and grout. In places, it looked like a 5-year-old had done it. He called and said he'd be coming instead at 11:30. By 10:05 we lost power. The guy showed up with an assistant and said they could finish even in poor light. We let them, but it meant my wife had to stay at the house while I headed off to the hospital.

There were some torrential downpours on that drive. I was driving pretty fast. The car's "hydroplaning" light kept coming on. My guess was that it meant I was making good time, so I took it as a compliment. In any case, I got to the Dartmouth-Hitchcock hospital (not our usual hospital) in about an hour... as quickly as the GPS predicted.

I've been debating whether I want to tell the following story. It's kind of embarrassing... but, I know you guys would never use it against me or anything... you're better than that, right? So, okay.

First, I have to backtrack. I have diabetes insipidus. It makes me pee too much and usually feel dehydrated. But if I take a pill called "ADH" (Anti-Diuretic Hormone) that is supposed to be produced by the hypothalamus in conjunction with the pituitary gland, I do much better. There is, however, some danger with ADH. If my body produces too LITTLE urine because I take too much ADH, my sodium levels could jump with catastrophic results. So they don't let me have the amount of ADH I'd like each day, and I also go one day each week not taking it at all. That day was today. Monday. The same day as my MRI at Dartmouth-Hitchcock hospital.

So, I got there and used the john and figured I was good to go. A sign said an MRI will last 30 to 90 minutes, and my bladder was empty.

The hospital staff was prompt and efficient. They stuck an I.V. in my arm and had me in the machine, lying very flat, with my head held still, in no time flat.

Did I mention that I don't lie flat? No, I guess I did not. I usually sleep in my recliner for that very reason. If I sleep in the bed, I have to prop up my chest and head with about twenty pillows. If I sleep flatter than that like a normal person... (or even like one of you guys)... it's very uncomfortable - kind of like I used to feel when I was a kid if I hung upside down from a bar. In time, my face gets puffy and wrinkled and I wake up after a bad night's sleep feeling and looking like a zombie for ten minutes or so.

So, they put me in this machine, lying completely flat, and told me not to move. I followed their orders and half an hour later they paused and told me that they would now do the contrast. That's where they inject some kind of dye that the machine can detect as it takes its photos.

After another half hour of whirring and buzzing and vibrating - about the time I started to realize that I kind of needed to pee - they told me it was done. They just needed to bring in the radiologist to check out the images.

Another ten minutes passed and I still couldn't move. A new guy entered the technician's booth. I could see him because of a mirror built into the helmet they had me wearing. I saw him laughing. I saw the nurses laughing. Something was clearly hilarious. He left and a nurse entered my room and pulled me feet first from the machine. "Decomposed," she said. "I'm sorry, but we screwed up and forgot to connect the contrast dye tube to your I.V. We need to do that part over. It should only take fifteen minutes. Will that be alright?"

By that time, I really had to use the bathroom and told her so. She said she could get me a bottle if I needed one but that I couldn't move. I had to keep my head where it was. "Or we could just finish this without doing that."

"Okay," said I. "Let's finish this.

Well, it wasn't fifteen minutes. It took them ten just to get started. I was extremely uncomfortable when it ended.

The nurse told me we just had to wait on the radiologist again. Ten minutes later he'd appeared and left. The nurse approached again.

"This is unusual," she said, "but he wants to do another scan. "It will just take 5 minutes. Will that be all right?"

I explained that my bladder was extremely full and the whole reason I was having the MRI done was because of this condition I had with producing too much urine. And that today was the one day each week when I don't take the medicine that usually makes it manageable.

"Should I get you the bottle?" she asked.

Aargh. Five minutes isn't that long. I told her to do the new scan.

But five minutes passed and they hadn't started it. I started squirming. I actually couldn't lie still. So I squeezed the Emergency button and apologized.

"Can I get up and come back?" I asked. "I'm sorry, but no," she said. So she went and got me a bottle. I'd used such a contraption after my surgery, so it wasn't new to me, but now I was lying on my back, mostly inside the M.R.I. machine, unable to move my head to see what I was doing. A male nurse helped me move the bottle because I couldn't even tell which way to hold it. "We don't want you wearing any of it," he said. LOL. At one point he asked me how much I typically void. I told him I had no idea, but that today it would be a lot. I think he may have been wondering if he'd need to get a second bottle. I stopped before I had to, though, and a single bottle was sufficient.

That's the story. If you didn't find it entertaining... well... it's probably because you didn't get to spend five minutes watching a guy flat on his back trying to piss in a bottle while several nurses were walking around him trying their best to pretend that this was routine and not one of the funniest things ever!

I figure that hospitals must get more than their share of comical situations. I still remember my post-surgery migraine, when I was walking laps around the floor as required but then tried telling a nurse that I thought I might be having a stroke because of the massive aura in my vision. She didn't pay that much mind and asked "What room are you in?" "Uh, in the cardiology recovery room," I said. "NO, what room are you in?" she repeated. "The nurses room. Where surgery patients recover." "No, what room are you in?" she asked again. "I don't know its name. But my cognitive functions are fine," I assured her. "I just can't see." She paused. "What roo -" Another nurse jumped in. "I know what room he's in," she said. "I"ll take him back to it."

LOL. Like I said, lots of comical situations... but I still wouldn't be surprised if the old fart strapped down in the MRI machine and needing to pee makes their 2023 Christmas Party's blooper reel.

BTW, my "30 to 90 minute" M.R.I. took over two hours. While it wasn't as much fun as I'd hoped, I did at least learn that lying flat on my back in a machine that vibrates and buzzes and whines nonstop on a day when I skipped the medication that keeps my kidneys from going berserk is probably worth a change or two before I do it again.

But before I come down too hard on myself, the hospital definitely deserves some of the credit. There's a whole department dedicated to doing MRIs. That's all the people there do! And yet they forgot to hook up their contrast material to my I.V. tube? REALLY????

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