So, yesterday, I had the CT Scan. The machine seemed pretty similar to the MRI, except it didn’t make all that noise (atari beeps). The technician did the scan without contrast. He came back and told me that he had the radiologist look at the pictures because there “was something in my sinus”. So they wanted to do with with contrast, which meant that they would inject a dye into my system and then do it again.
So, the technician (Randy) took me to the back room and started preparing an IV. He took my blood pressure, and attached this IV to my arm. Then he injected some saline into my system. Dunno what that was for. But then he wanted me to move to a more comfortable room. And I was like “umm, what do I do with this?” and he was like “Bring it with you”. I was like “OK”.. and he was like “oh, sorry. They raise us real smart on the farm.” Before, we were chit-chatting and he was telling me that he grew up on a farm in Illinois. 🙂
Anyway, I was standing there with this IV hanging out of my arm and his idea of a more comfortable room was a room with a bench and an armless chair. So I really would have preferred to have stayed in the other room so I could just leave my arm right there on the armrest. But that’s ok. Except I was waiting for forever! Like at least a half hour to 40 minutes.
Finally I get to go again. He helped me lie down, and adjusted the head rest and the leg rest. Then he had to come back in and adjust me again because apparently he did it too much before. When he injected the dye, he warned me that I was going to feel really hot inside. He said it usually starts in the back of the throat. For me, it was more around my nose and face that I first notice the hotness. Then it started spreading through my body, and I was just kinda smiling. Then he said “It’s going to feel like you are urinating, but, I promise you, you are not”.. and then it did feel like that. It was very warm in that area. Weirdest sensation ever. I was trying hard not to laugh. But I couldn’t help smiling about it. It was hilarious.
He had told me that he was going to give me a CD with the images that I can take with my to give to my doctor(s). So once I knew I was getting that, I wasn’t going anywhere without it. That meant I was waiting an extra half hour (he said it was going to take 10 minutes, but apparently when the next patient went into the machine, it pushed my pictures back so he couldn’t access them until that patient was done). But now I have the images.
I played with the images a bit yesterday, but I really couldn’t tell much from them because I don’t know what I’m looking at. The bonus is the MRI images from 5/8/06 were also on there.. Yay! But these pictures are definately weird and definately kinda freaky.
I saved a couple but I am not sure I want to upload them for all to see.. Part of me does, but the rest of me thinks it’s too weird. Let me know if you think I should display the pictures or not.
August 25, 2006 at 9:50 pm
Weird. I’ll look at them if you upload them. But no pressure!
August 26, 2006 at 3:47 pm
I don’t think it’s weird. I think you should FlickR them. And maybe have a creepy avatar of one 🙂
It’s just your head.
August 26, 2006 at 3:58 pm
We want to see, we want to see! 🙂
August 26, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Oh yea — I think you should talk about the whole copy-protection issue on the CD too, and the viewer program.
It wasn’t like it was just a floder full of JPGs. There were no images on the drive. The whole drive compressed to 9MEGs, but the information was not accessible off of a ZIP / copy on a harddrive. So, we had to make an image file of the entire disk, about 230M, which only ZIPed to 190M or so. So, it’s 9M for the data, and another 180M to get around issues accessing it.
Thank you corporations for your fabuous DRM. It’s not “Digital Rights Management”, it’s “Digital Restrictions Management”. Rights don’t need management. This is a restriction. Now, which has more weight here? HIPPA act saying we have access to our own data, Fair Use clause of copyright law, saying we can make fair use archive of anything we want, or DMCA for bypassing a copyright restriction? Although I’m not sure that making a bit-by-bit copy (or image) of a cd could really be considered bypassnig a restriction; the restriction still exists in the new copy.
Anyway, the image viewer is really strange.. use your mousewheel to cycle through images in a series. Each series is a cross-section. You can kind of see how it goes from bottom/teeth to top/eyes. It’s quite odd indeed. Cycling through, messing with the contrast & brightness, there really are almost an infinite number of different images that can be exported from the viewer.
But, really, it’s probably about 500 images or so.
There’s definitely something weird with one of the sinuses is all *I* could tell. . . And one eye is definitely lower/bigger…
August 26, 2006 at 6:26 pm
ok, the masses have spoken. Clint will be uploading them to flickr.
August 26, 2006 at 6:48 pm
You’ll hafta click on each one to see fullsize / comments / etc