Before I go into the details of the day, I want to tell you that it looks like I will be listed next week. Until Blue Cross officially agrees, it is unofficial- but if Blue Cross were to renege on me now, after all they have put me through, I don't know what I would do- wait & hope for Dallas, I guess. But they agreed to cover me in Houston when my case manager appealed it, and they have covered everything leading up to it, so I am thinking positively.
The day didn't get off to an auspicious beginning, however. I received a call from the hospital Thursday, and it was a technician confirming that I was going to be in the basement of the main building for an MRI at 7:45 am. Well, I told him I'd be there, but then of course I had to tell Suzanne that we had to leave at 5:30 instead of 6:00! She arrived promptly, and we took off. My paperwork not only had a start time of 8:20, it also said I was to report to the outpatient building on the 17th floor! It turns out that Methodist has about 3 MRI Departments. That test was quite difficult for me, because like so many other procedures that are being imaged, or photographed, you are supposed to hold your breath in order to produce images that are clear. Holding my breath is just not possible for me, at least not beyond a few seconds. I don't have anything approaching normal lung volume- hence, there is no such thing as a "deep breath" for me any more. And so, although I told the technician before we began, he said he was sure I would do fine. Yeah. Really. Sure enough, after about 3 tries, the technician stopped and said "I'm really not getting acceptable images because of the movement." I said "Yes, I'm sure that's true. I told you that I can't hold my breath anything like 30 seconds." (I wanted to be snide and say "What part of that sentence didn't you understand?" but I refrained. It never pays to alienate medical people.) Well, they took me upstairs to another machine on the 2nd floor, and although it also asked me to hold my breath, and I still couldn't do it, they injected the dye and took photographs without asking me to cease breathing. Apparently, they passed muster. I had 4 more tests, each pretty involved, with much waiting in between, but just like in Dallas, they never could tell me that I had an hour to go eat. I had taken a protein bar, and I told Suzanne to bring some things to snack on, plus when I was about to cave from hunger, one of the CT Scan departments had some emergency food in the refrigerator, and the technician procured a banana, a muffin and one of those tiny little single servings of Blue Bell ice cream. That helped enormously. Finally, at the end of the day, they typed and cross-matched my blood, and I went up to the transplant center to let them know that I had been there and to have the nurse remove a catheter from my arm, because it had been there all day since the MRI technician said he was leaving it in because someone else might need it (if I had to have any more dye). No one else needed it, and it was pinching the hell out of my arm, so Maricella in the transplant center did the honors. (Only an RN can remove a catheter, and they have whole departments in the hospital with no RNs!) Then Kelley came out & told me that they had already processed the MRI, and I was on the way to the list. It's a good thing,too, because I feel like I slipped another notch yesterday. Maybe it was just all the stuff I had to do, but I "de-saturate" almost immediately now when I am off oxygen, and even with it, I could only walk slowly for 2 minutes before my saturation was too low to continue. I have learned so much through this- how much it means to have enough oxygen in your blood- the fact that just standing up takes more than sitting down or lying down- talking uses it up really fast- and trying to lift anything is all but impossible. What it adds up to is that I'm really unable to do much beyond sit quietly. I want to stay positive- and I will- this was just an extremely difficult day.
Stratton came down- he took Brian to his folk's down in Port Arthur, then spent the rest of the night down there, because they were late arriving, as always. But he was here this morning- bringing his love and cheer and some new gadgets for me like a massager & a neck pillow. It's so nice to have family around. I'll sign off- will pick this up & report when the listing is official, as well as whatever location on the list they assign me.
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