I like an out-of-town trip that involves a hotel. I figure might as well make lemonade out of the lemons thrown my way. I tell Wife I want to stay in a nice place, her first take is "we won't have time to enjoy it, we have to be up and out before 6:00am." I thought about it and realizing after the CT scan we should have almost 4 hours before the ultrasound, we might be able to come back to the room. My guess worked out, Mijo (my Pirate, for now he is at SU) stayed behind and slept. I would have been a little bothered, but he stayed up doing some homework. We ran out with good to great timing at 5:40am. Then the shit started, we had left both keycards with Mijo in the room, in case he needed to check out if we got caught late, he could take a shuttle to the hospital and get to us, but we couldn't get out of the garage without the keycard, so now Wife had to run back up to the 8th floor, wake him, then come back down before we could even leave. This lost us about 10min, but we got going. In the meantime, I entered the address but one appt was at 1515 Holcombe Blvd and the other was 1220 Holcombe Blvd. I accidentally entered 1212 Holcombe Blvd and somehow the practice run we did the night before which took about 3 minutes turned into a 10min BS parade of rights and lefts, with all sorts of human targets to avoid on the streets while it was still dark. I eventually figured what I had done wrong, and we found the hospital. The parking garage as I already mentioned the day before was also a mess, but we got in the building and took some long walks down some long hallways before getting to our destination. The CT scan was more relaxed, I was already a little late, but we slowed down, asked for help to get there and there were some nice shuttles to get from one building to the other. Upon finishing the scan, I was told I was done and free to leave. We headed back to the hotel and got our young Pirate and went to have some well-earned breakfast. The pecan coffee was delicious, I had not had a flavored coffee in a long while, ended up having two cups. We then had about two hours to relax, so we went up to the room, which we had until noon.
The ultrasound/biopsy was definitely the worst it could have been. I get that technicians aren't always going to be friendly, but I was told I could have someone with me for support at all times, but they said no. Fine, I get it, but they kept leaving me alone in that room for extended amounts of time. I can live with that, but after spending about 30minutes doing ultrasound, the tech leaves to discuss with the doctors, then comes back and starts doing it near my face, around my ears and I have eyes, I can see little shapes on the screens. Of course, the techs can't discuss what they see, so I am in a world alone, she or her sidekick intern weren't there to comfort me, they leave me alone again. I'm like keep it together, which I can't with thoughts of having some sort of cancer ridden face now. Then they come in, with extra people, no real description of who the other people were, some guy was there to take the glass slides and run off to go look at them. After an hour and having me hold my gauze on the holes they made on my neck, they come in and say the thing on your beard line net to your ear is nothing to worry about, the doctor just wanted to make sure. By the way, you're not bleeding anymore, you can finally leave and go find your wife. This was the train-ee that walked me out, it wasn't even the real technician, I just feel she could work on her bedside manner a bit, up until then, everything had been good. The CT scan guy was very nice and even made some jokes with me, I liked him.
Upon getting outside, Wife was worried for me, the whole time from 12:30 when we walked in there to almost 4:00pm, when we left was entirely too long for what I expected. I realize things take time, but things can be improved. The paperwork all says, you can have support with you wherever you go, I could have really used it while they were scaring the bejesus out of me.
It was probably 3:50pm when we got out of there, we did a quick stop at the souvenir store, got Pirate boy a "cancer" hoodie and hit the road. It was so close to rush hour, but we got on some toll roads, and I think that helped get us out a little quicker. We were probably eating at Poke Jo's in Austin by 7:30pm, that brisket sandwich was pretty good, but being home was even better. We get to go back next week on Tuesday night for a 10:00am appointment on Wednesday morning, March 6th.
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