Port Complications

Well, how did you celebrate March's exit? No matter what you did, I'll bet your celebrations were more festive than mine. I spent most of the day at OSU's Doan Hall bouncing from reception area to lab to waiting room to lab and back, undergoing the prescribed C/T and bone scans. It's been a long time since I've had a day devoted to tests - the process hasn't changed, but my usual routine of knitting and reading helped pass the time pleasantly.

Both tests involve a fair amount of sitting-around "quality time." For the C/T, of course, I have to swill my favorite beverage Redi-Cat before the scan. For the bone scan, a radioactive medium is administered 3 hours prior to the test so that it can be absorbed by the bones. Irregularities in the bones then show up as "hot spots", so I'm challenged to recite the catalog of breaks, fractures, and arthritis accurately (eek).

This time I found that my Mediport posed unexpected problems. OSU hospitals will no longer use a port when administering C/T contrast media (see this article for the story behind this decision). A different problem arises for the bone scan; when administered through a port, the medium tends to pool, and can produce a false positive - the last thing one wants.

I had the C/T scan without the contrast medium, and we compromised for the bone scan by using the port and taking additional exposures of the ribcage. I may be selfish, but I'm more than happy to spend that extra half hour in the scanner to avoid being poked to no avail.

We're off to Cleveland Clinic on Friday for the usual round of appointments. I'm curious to see if CCF also restricts using ports for C/T contrast. Inquiring minds, and all that ... stay tuned.