Yesterday I had my CT scan. I was pretty well topped up with valium so all went rather swimmingly. No head cage or similar. Just a foam rectangle with a head indentation shape in it to rest my head. Lovely cool room, super staff, less than 5 minute wait. What more could you ask for?
I was warned that the recorded voice on this machine was rather fierce. She was, Apparently the other machine’s recording is in a thick Somerset accent. My son could hear the machine from the waiting room and when I got out he said ‘It didn’t sound anything like the one on 24hrs in A&E’ Anyway I did as I was told and breathed in when I was told, held my breath when I was told and breathed normally when I was told. Then repeated after the contrast was delivered into my vein. Makes you hot all over and you feel like you are wetting yourself. I didn’t open my eyes from the time I laid down til it was over. Apparently my veins were very ‘generous’ and I was told I’d be cleaned up before I left so it didn’t look like I’d been massacred. Didn’t see, didn’t look, just laid back and submitted to the inevitable. 1000% more doable than an MRI.
Today I’ve been to work, some of the locals know what’s going on, but the other customers don’t. I’ve spent far too much time today debating if I can be arsed to shave my legs or not. I’ve also spent far too much time worrying about my son and where and who he should be with tomorrow. In fact I’ve spent too much time worrying. Goes with the territory I guess.
Tomorrow at 7am I will be picked up and taken for a 8am check in at Taunton. I’m having a panendoscopy. Which appears to be a holy trinity of endoscopes that look at every crevice of your gullet. voice box, throat, nose and ears. I’m very much guessing they will take biopsies of the ‘swelling’ they saw at the base of my tongue. I have no idea how shit this will make me feel, or how much it will hurt. There are risks. But I’ve weighed them up to find out if ideally there’s nothing sinister there, or if there is it’s tiny and can be removed by surgery through my mouth, anything worse than that I’m not ready to voice yet. I know what it would mean, if you want to know enough you can go and find out yourself.
The facts so far are these.
I presented with a quinsy. In the table in the article below I tick a lot of the cancer boxes and not many of the quinsy ones.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4220219/
An ENT consultant has seen something on the base of my tongue that when asked if it could be cancer has said ‘possibly not probably’
Oropharyngeal cancer rates are rising exponentially due to HPV infection. I’ve spent the last 5 years having bits cut out of me due to HPV.
http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2015/11/13/mouth-cancer-rates-are-increasing-but-why/
Forgive me if I am tempted to draw my own conclusions from that little lists of facts (and the plenty more I’ve read!) But sometimes zebras sound like horses.
Hello Vera Juice 