Today was Cayden's appointment at the hospital for his final test in the reflux testing he's had to have due to a UTI in June. The test is called DMSA.
We went in at 10am to have a cannula put in. I was expecting them to put it in the back of his hand or the crease in his elbow. The last time he had a cannula put in, it was put in the back of his hand. It took them three tries but they eventually got it. This time, they looked at the back of his hands. They looked at the creases of both elbows. They didn't see ONE vein that they thought would work. They immediately started looking at his feet. He ended up getting a cannula (IV) in one of the veins on the top of his foot near his ankle. Poor boy screamed the whole time it was getting put in. :(
Once the cannula was in we were sent down to the medical physics department. We went down and waited in the waiting room while two members of staff (unsure if they had a proper title so I'll call them nurses) went into a room with a ton of yellow "warning, hazardous" stickers all over the door. They emerged, one gesturing us to come with them and the other was carrying a small white metal box. It looked like a tiny toolbox.
We got into the room and they unwrapped Cayden's foot (it was wrapped up to keep the cannula in place) and rinsed the cannula out with a tiny bit of saline. Then one nurse was holding Cayden's foot, I was holding Cayden, and the other nurse was opening the metal box. Inside laid a small metal syringe. Something totally out of a horror movie or even Breaking Dawn. Had I not seen it with my own eyes I would never have thought something like that would happen in real life. The nurse dealing with the syringe saw the look on my face and said "this syrum we're using is mildly radioactive. It isn't enough to make Cayden sick or anything, but it needs to be this way so that our camera can pick up the images it needs to." That explains the metal syringe and box. She injected the syrum into Cayden and rinsed the cannula through again with saline. Once she was done they worked on taking the cannula out. It was maybe 20 minutes since he had the thing put in and they were putting him through more pain again to take it out. :( Once it was out, it bled quite a bit but they did what they could to stop it and then put a plaster (band-aid) on it.
That was easy. We then had two hours to do what we wanted. We fed Cayden his lunch (porridge with apple and pear. Yum) and then decided to get something to eat ourselves. Ryan was being so funny he was just talking away and the woman sitting next to us loved every minute of it. We went back up to the room we were given for the day and sat and talked while Cayden slept.
Once our two hours was up we went back down to the medical physics department and I went into a room with a gigantic table with two flat pieces connected together to form a 90* angle and a huge hole at the end. The hole and table reminded me of what I always imagined a CAT scan or MRI machine would look like (I've never seen either of these). This is what it looked like.
The two flat pieces were angled so that one was directly beneath him and the other side was perpendicular to his body. They took a "scan", the nurse kept calling them pictures, for 2 minutes and then the nurse went to look at the images taken. She said that one turned out fine but she had to do another one. This time she angled the camera under Cayden so that the crease of the angle of the two slabs was directly beneath his spine. She took another "scan" for another 2 minutes and then we were done! She said because of the syrum used it would be best that any nappies (diapers) changed in the next 24 hours should be disposed of directly outside. This has been sort of difficult since I am on my own at home right now, I live on the first floor (a flight of stairs) of a building and have a little boy that likes to follow me everywhere. If this happened with Ryan it wouldn't take 2 seconds to do - but with Ryan following me all the time I have allocated a special bin that can be thrown away and will throw all the nappies away inside the bin when the 24 hours is up. We will get the results of this test more than likely when we see the pediatrician on October 14. The test is to see if there is any scarring on his kidneys because of the reflux. Fingers crossed there isn't.
Now for a Ryan funny. He needed to go to the bathroom so I took him to the "parent's bathroom" on the ward we were on. I got him in there and helped him with his pants and helped him get on the toilet. When he was finished he turned around so I could help him with his pants and as he was reaching to flush the toilet he shrieks "CAPTAIN'S HAT!!" "CAPTAIN'S HAT!!" I look around thinking, what?! So I look around and I see some of those cardboard bed pan things that are used in hospitals for urine collection for tests... He wanted to put one one. He got one and put it on his head and he looked like a cowboy. It was hilarious!
