Friday, April 8, 2011

Ever wonder...

We have all read or heard those stories where someone ends up getting the wrong limb amputated. And haven't you wondered, come on just how does that happen?

Well, now I know.

Went and had my mammogram on the 5th. It's is fine by the way. The tech takes me back into the room. She places some stickers on my scar so that scar tissue can be identified on the scan. Then she went and looked at something on a screen a few feet away from me. Then she comes back over to me and says "so your tumor was right on your chest wall and the wires were inserted from the top down at this angle"

"NO" I reply. "My tumor was right here, no where near my chest wall and the wires were inserted from the bottom. Where my scar is"

"Well, that's not what is on you mammogram from when you had surgery"

"What are you looking at?"

She takes me over to the screen. I look at my mammogram they took when they did the wire insertion for surgery. I say "see those, those are the tumor markers, that is where the tumor bed was and that is a wire and that is a wire".

She says "oooohhhh"

"What are you using this as a reference for?"

"Well I wanted to know where the tumor was so I can make sure we scan that area"

"Well, the area that the tumor was is gone. As in it was removed during surgery. How about if we just stick as much of me into the scan as possible and scan that"

I am not amused. And now I know how people get the wrong limb amputated.

It did seem like she shoved as much of me as possible into the machine. And she tried to get away with just scanning the left girl and not bothering with the right one. No. Both were scanned. The radiologist said it looked good.

I'm going to have Dr. Barth look at them when I see him in May.

In other news. I saw my amazing surgeon, Dr. Guerra. She is pregnant with her first baby. Due in June. She is crazy excited and sticking her belly out for it to be fondled. Very cute.

It was a good visit.

The scan was rather scary.

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