Well, things at the hand surgeon appointment went a little like this:
Surgeon: "Here are your options: Surgery, which may or may not work, or a steroid injection, which may work better than surgery for the moment. If you get the steroid shot and still don't feel better, then surgery will be an effective treatment; however, without the steroid shot, surgery is basically a big, risky shot in the dark and may not fix the problem. The steroid shot will help regardless of what the underlying problem is."
Me: "Let's do the steroid shot, then."
*Surgeon pulls out two pre-filled syringes. One with an anesthetic agent and one with the steroid injection. Attached to each is a needle measuring about 3 to 4 inches in length.*
Surgeon: "Do you like needles?"
Me: "No one likes needles, but I have several piercings, a tattoo, and was once a phlebotomist. Needles don't really bother me."
Surgeon: "Good. Here goes."
*Surgeon then injects the anesthetic directly into my wrist. It hurts like all bloody hell, then makes my whole hand go completely numb. Next he injects the steroid solution into the same spot in my wrist. It doesn't hurt as bad, it mostly just feels like he's injecting molten plastic into my wrist like it's an injection mold.*
Me: "Not too bad."
Surgeon: "Wait until the anesthetic wears off."
Thankfully, the numbing agent lasted until about 2 p.m. today. But man, he was not kidding when he warned me about the numbing agent wearing off! I totally want my badass bitemouth cat to chew my arm off right now!
And he took my spiffy CD with the MRI and x-ray images of my fucked up hand and wrist! Very sad face! :(
You can always request another image CD from the place you had the radiology studies done... you may have to sign another release waiver first. :-)
ReplyDeleteOn another note, I joke with my patients that I went to nursing school to ensure I was on the other end of needles, lol.
LOL, vegahelp! My cousin is a nurse, and she says basically the same thing. I was considering going to nursing school, but after 6 years of working as a phleb and a CNA, I got really burned out, so I've switched to getting my pharmacy technician license for now.
DeleteAs for the whole CD thing, there's no way for me to copy the images for my own purposes onto my computer without purchasing an access code, so I probably just won't bother. It was hard to tell what I was looking at on the MRI images anyway. (Even the hand surgeon wasn't entirely sure what he was looking at on the CD, which is why we went with the steroid shot first.) The x-ray had a really nice image of the hairline Colles' and trapezium fractures I have, though. Oh well.
Also, thanks for reading and following me! It's nice to know that people actually read this! :)
Take care!
--Thursday