Cancer Scans Suck!

We had Brynlee's 3-month scans the last two days. Initially I was so excited that we were only going to have two days rather than the four days that we have become accustomed to; however, these past two days have felt like more than four days.

 

On Tuesday Brynlee and I headed out bright and early to be at the hospital at 7 a.m. for Brynlee's MRI scan. They were able to get Brynlee's IV started with only one try, so things were starting off reasonably well. However, during Brynlee's recovery from sedation her heart started having some trouble. She was having bradycardia (slow heart beat) and then it would jump back up and some irregular heart beat. Initially the nurse thought her monitor was not reading right, so she listened through the stethascope and then called the nurse practitioner. When nurses start getting excited and shouting across the recovery room and being preparing to call "code," you know it's serious. Fortunately, Brynlee's heart never dropped so low that things escalated beyond the nurses simply being prepared if the worse would have happened. They did, however, call for an EKG, which was normal, and consulted with a cardiologist. They were preparing me to have Brynlee be admitted and have a cardio workup; however, the cardiologist felt that she had just had a bad reaction to the sedation medication, and we were allowed to go after it appeared that she had slept off the sedation and things were stable.

 

Brynlee and I headed back on Wednesday for Brynlee's CT scan and clinic appointment and things didn't exactly go much better. We arrived early to go to the lab to submit her urine sample, to get an IV started, and to get her blood work going. The IV team was able to get her IV started again on the first try, which was wonderful. We headed over to sedation, and I immediately became somewhat nervous when I met the nurse practitioner, who I had never met before and who was very much overly freaking out about the experience we had the day before and the fact that Brynlee had a cold. We needed to have an NG tube placed for the contrast for the CT as Brynlee will not drink it, and the NP wanted her deep suctioned before placing the NG. The nurse came in and gave her a little bit of Versed to sedate, which was a different drug than the day before, they suctioned, which did nothing as the gunk from her cold is in her chest, and they placed the NG tube. This nurse was also one that we had never had before in sedation, and she honestly did not seem to know what she was doing. Long story short, it just took forever to get the contrast and everything going. It was during the time while we were waiting for the hour to pass after the contrast had been administered and before we could have the scan that Brynlee's heart started doing something similar to what it had before again while she was sleeping. I just watched her because even though the heart monitor alarm was going off no one came to check, which was also irritating. Anyway, the heart issue upset the NP, and so she no longer wanted to sedate for the CT with the Versed. They tried sedating with the Fentanyl because they didn't want to give Ketamine because of her cold, but that just made Brynlee completely the opposite of what we needed, and she was wide awake, moving all over the place, and talking, and not holding still enough to get the CT done. They ended up using a little bit of Versed, and we were able to get it done. However, the NP ordered another EKG and was pushing to get her admitted to have a cardio workup. Since we had clinic after the scan, the NP decided to leave it up to our oncologists to make the call on whether Brynlee needed to be admitted.

So we headed up to clinic and for once we hardly had to wait at all to see the doctors. Dr. Staddon came in and shortly thereafter Dr. Fluchel came in and basically discussed everything that was going on with Brynlee's heart. They assured me that they had thoroughly discussed everything with cardiology, and it was felt that there was no need to admit Brynlee or do a cardio workup. Both of her EKGs came back completely normal. So finally we got down to the real reason for the visit. Brynlee's scans came back stable. They did say that her spots in her liver were more pronounced; however, that was felt to be due to the amount of contrast, the time it was administered, etc. So the overlying good news is that Brynlee is still stable for now. Honestly, after all of the excitement and frustration of the two days, the news of her cancer still being stable was just overshadowed. We follow up in three months for her one-year post treatment scans. We will have to do a bunch of tests at that time, including a new hearing test, echocardiogram, etc., but we are done for now.