Bronchoscopy
Early Tuesday morning, August 2nd, my father-in-law drove me to the main campus of the Cleveland Clinic for my bronchoscopy. After checking in and waiting for a bit I was called back to the prep area. I changed into the requisite hospital gown and waited in a bed while a nurse stuck me with an IV.
Dr. Khabbaza came in and introduced me to Dr. Akindipe, who would be doing my procedure. When it was time, they took me into the bronchoscopy room. There were a lot of monitors and equipment, it looked pretty high tech. I learned later that the Clinic has one of the top bronchoscopy suites in the world.
During a bronchoscopy, a scope is inserted down your throat into your lung passages. They can go in through your nose or your mouth. In my case they went through my nose. I was knocked out, of course.
The doctor is able to look around your lungs to see what is going on. More importantly, the scope has tiny forceps that are able to take very small tissue samples for analysis.
I don’t remember any of the procedure. The last thing I remember was looking around the room at all the equipment and then one of the doctors told me he was going to sedate me.
The next thing I remember was waking up back in some post-op room. After a few minutes they let me go and we drove home.
More scans
The next morning I headed to Mercy Regional Medical Center for my scheduled scans. A CT scan is like an X-ray, except that it takes multiple images in a cross section, like multiple slices.
Most often, “contrast” is used during a CT scan to provide a clearer image. Contrast can be either oral, IV or both. For these scans, I had both. For oral contrast, you have to drink a barium fluid. It’s thick like a shake and usually has a berry flavor. It’s not very good, but I drank it all.
The IV contrast is injected into your IV during the scan. It feels warm going in and especially makes you feel warm in your crotch. It makes you feel like you wet your pants, but the feeling goes away in a few seconds.
For the scan, you lay on a narrow table and then they slide the table into the center of a giant donut. For chest scans, you have to hold your breath while the scanner is taking images. That’s not easy when you are having breathing problems. Usually a scan takes just a couple of minutes, but this time, I was having multiple areas checked, so it took a little longer.
Next was a nuclear bone scan. For this test, you are injected with a radioactive tracer. Then you wait for an hour for the tracer to soak into your bones before the scan. Then you lie on a platform and a special camera takes pictures from head to toe. It can detect the tracer and how much of it has been absorbed by your bones. This is a slow test. It took about 45 minutes and you can’t move. I just relaxed. I might have taken a nap.
When I was done, my father-in-law joked that I probably glowed in the dark now. They said if I had to fly that I would set off alarms at the airport, so they gave me a card to give airport security. I wasn’t traveling anywhere but took the card because I found it amusing.