telerib | Well, that sucked

All that stuff about the biopsy being like dental work?

Lies, lies, lies, all lies.

They gave me Valium, which was very good at relaxing me, even up to when they stuck me for the topical anaesthetic. Then they *injected* the topical, which burned. Relaxation stood up and looked around.

When the needle went in, it went screaming for the hills. "You may feel some discomfort," my ass. It *hurt,* a lot. Once it was *in,* that wasn't so bad, and the reports of "You'll feel some pressure but not real pain" were more or less accurate. After, it hurt to even think about flexing my abdominal muscles (which made getting from the CT bench to the gurney a piece of work, since no one offered me any assistance, and I was too addled with fear and pain to think to demand it). Amazingly enough, that has faded quite quickly, to where it just feels sort of bruised today.

Abigail was apparently rather frigid and unwilling to give it up for the doctor; he said something about the samples not being taken well. He took a total of six rather than the usual four, and called another doctor in for a secret powwow. I asked what was up, and all he'd say was that he was having hard time getting the sample. Hope that's really all it was.

The check-in staff was great, and my nurse Betty was everything a health care professional should be, no joke. The rest of the staff... well, if I have any more procedures done, it will not be at Doctor's. To go into all of the things that either happened or I heard happening to other people ("We can't find the patient" - really. I think they were still looking for him when I left) would take pages and pages, and wouldn't be terribly interesting. Suffice to say: sloppy, lazy, unprofessional and inconsistent work. The highlight was the nurse who complained to me how lazy the other nurses were. Hello? You don't say these things to the patients! And no one told my dad when I was out of the procedure. I've been in recovery for around 2 hours, and he was still thinking they were doing the biopsy, and so something must have been horribly wrong. 2 hours, I might add, after I told the Recovery Room staff that I had family waiting for me.

So. All done, feeling much better today, and hoping to get good results from Pathology somewhere in the Wed-Fri range.