So I headed down to St. Joseph Hospital yesterday morning for my abdominal CT scan. When I scheduled the appointment, I was told I'd have to show up two hours early to drink a nice barium milkshake. It turned out when I reached the radiology floor, though, that my urologist had merely ordered a scan with and without contrast. No barium required. This meant I was there two hours early.

That was okay, though. They squeezed me right in. Lying on the table being slid like a magician's assistant through the donut hole of the scanner, I was amused by the light-up pictographs that instructed me when to hold my breath and when to exhale. The fellow in the breath-holding pictograph looked like he had a huge wad of chewing tobacco stuffed into his cheek. Among the other icons on the scanner display were a heart, a pair of lungs, and something that at first looked to me like a bondage hood.  It was actually supposed to be a radiation warning symbol with a camera aperture affixed to its underside.

I went through the scanner twice before a nurse stuck me with an IV line to flood my veins with a radiocontrast dye to help my urinary tract show up better in the images. She warned me that I would probably feel warm or flushed for a minute or so when the dye went in. The sensation was actually a whole lot weirder than that. It actually made me feel like I was being cooked from the inside out, like my bones were glowing red. It was like having the worst fever I'd ever experienced. And the sensation faded, as promised, after a minute or so.

(Does anyone know why it feels that way? I'm wondering if it's some kind of immunoresponse.)

Anyway, my urologist will have the results by the time I go in to get scoped next week. I'm holding out hope that it's just a mild case of stones. We shall see.