Here's the rundown from Monday:
1. Drink bottle 1 at 715 and have it done within an hour. This contrast is thick (looks like the consistency of a melted milkshake), so the first bottle of 450mL filled him up. In fact, he got full before finishing the first bottle.
2. Do not throw up. Dave threw some of the first one up. Lets be real for a minute...it looked gross and smelled like chalky banana flavored medicine (no, despite his attempting to force it on me, I did not try it). I'm glad I wasn't there for this...he told me that he threw up on the counter. Projectiled onto the counter. Claimed it was only a little, but even just a little of vomit is too much vomit. At least he cleaned up.
3. Drink bottle 2 at 815 and have it done within an hour. This bottle didn't happen at home. It was not drank within an hour.
4. Drive to the VA (with 900mL of "banana flavored" sloshing around in your tum-tum) and arrive in the imaging center by 915. Dave stopped at Shepeard to pick me up around 900 (he wanted me there for moral support I guess). When I got in the truck, I saw his second, unopened, bottle of contrast sitting in the cup holder. I told him then already that they were going to make him drink it before his scan. He thought that maybe they would say it was OK and one bottle was enough. When we arrived in the imaging center, he checked in, sat down, and opened the second bottle to start drinking it, thinking that if he got some down, it would be better than none. He gagged and heaved a little, but did not throw up (thank God, we were in a room full of old men who didn't need to see/hear him throw up).
5. Get an IV placed and have the CT performed by about 1015. Around 1015, we were still sitting in the waiting room with only about an inch or so of contrast drank from his bottle. By this time it was warm and he said he just flat out couldn't drink any more. Gross, I don't blame him. I continued to tell him that they were either going to send him home because he couldn't drink all of it or they were going to make him sit there all day until it was gone before performing the scan. We knew that most of those men sitting in that room had already endured this same contrast drink...and if those octogenarians can do it, so can he!
Around 1045, Dave noticed that everybody that had come in after him had already been seen, so he went to check at the counter. They admitted they had forgotten about him and would be seen soon. I'm not surprised there...the "behind the counter" staff in the imaging center seemed a little lacking...like lacking some intelligence in their job. Anywho...around 11, they finally called Dave back. After hearing that he had not drank all of his contrast, the tech informed him that for what they're looking for (looking at his entire chest and abdomen for mets, including his colon) he really needs to have those two full bottle of contrast in otherwise the scan may come back inconclusive because they won't be able to fully see what they need to. So the options are:
A: Take one more bottle home (plus the 3/4 of the other bottle he had not yet finished) and come back on Wednesday
B: Come back in a week to do in-patient contrast and spend 4 hours of your day sitting in the VA.
In different words, the tech basically told Dave to man up and drink the contrast...everybody else has to do it and gets it done. So Dave picked option A and was fired up with more determination to get it done on Wednesday.
later that day..... (Monday....we're still on Monday here folks)
I noticed Sophie sniffing around a hand towel that was, for some reason, balled into a ball on the bathroom floor sort of behind the toilet. Not a normal site...we might be cluttered and messy, but we don't leave things like towels balled up somewhere. When I picked it up, it was soaking wet. I thought to myself "why is this towel SOO wet?" My first thought was the cats. Fifi gets mad about her litter box sometimes (I've been neglectful...sue me) and will pee all over things she's not supposed to. Her favorite places are towels or clothes left on the floor in a bathroom. So, naturally, I smelled the towel to see if it smelled like cat piss. It didn't (thank God)! Baffled, I tossed the towel in the bathtub until Dave got home and I could ask him about the towel.
When Dave got home, he said "Oh, you moved the towel from the corner". I said "yeah, it was soaking wet, what was up with that?" ..... "that was the towel I used to clean up the throw up".
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! What kind of man-animal balls up his wet throw-up towel and throws it on the floor behind the toilet?! WTF?
So today, Dave is at home drinking more contrast and will hopefully get that CT scan.
I left him a not on our chalkboard that said "put on your big boy panties and DRINK" ... I'm sure that will motivate the crap out of him!
(And of course it took me too long to type this, so Dave just called...contrast = gone, CT = done. Now we wait until the 30th to hear the results.)
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