Scans and Snow

We may or may not be normal, but waiting four weeks to post scan results does mean one thing--that they were clear :)

Which was the only good part of that morning. Let me explain. No, is too long . . . let me sum up.

Scans were scheduled for Tuesday, December 1st. Chris was in Boston. It was the day after Emma's birthday. Jake and I had to be at Primary Children's at 7:00 a.m. for the CT scan, followed by the MRI at 8:00.

And it was snowing.

Not just snowing. SNOWING.

I do not like driving in the snow. Ever. At all. Period.

Didn't have a choice. (Well, I suppose I did have a choice, I could have stayed home. Or turned around when it became apparent how truly awful the roads were, which was about fifty feet from our driveway. But cancelling meant having to wait until January for scans and I simply could not face Christmas not knowing for certain.)

So off we went, leaving the house at 5:40 a.m. for the normally 50-minute drive.

It wasn't early enough.

By 6:40 a.m., we had finally reached I-15. I had hoped it would be slightly better. It wasn't. No lane lines in sight, four-wheel drive vehicles passing at insane speeds, snow falling so thick and fast that I couldn't see more than five feet.

I have never been so grateful to reach somewhere safely as I was to pull into Primary Children's parking lot at 7:40 a.m. I seriously considered never leaving until spring.

But finally scans were upon us. (Might I point out that, although we were almost 45 minutes late, we were the first patients to make it to the Radiology department that morning. So scans went swimmingly fast.)

I refused to leave the hospital between the end of scans at 9:15 and his clinic appointment at 11:30. So Jake and I found a comfy set of couches on the third floor and he curled up to take up a nap. I, being an experienced hospital mom, had a book with me.

The Hem/Onc clinic wasn't nearly as fast as Radiology. By 11:30, the roads had become more passable, so patients with earlier appointments were finally showing up and everyone was pushed back. We waited. And waited. And waited.

At 1:00, we finally saw Dr. Afify. As always, she was off-hand but direct in reporting clean scans. I'll confess I drew a deep breath of relief. After having had no nerves last time, this time I'd been nothing but nerves. Jake had had a cough for a month and I was sure that, that the least, the chest CT would show signs of something. But all clear and we were out of there at 1:15.

It took us only 55 minutes to get home. What a difference a few hours makes.

We're now halfway to the critical two-year mark. (Almost all cases of rhabdo relapse occur in the first two years off treatment.) And we're now on an every four month schedule of scans rather than every three months. Next scans in April.

Hopefully I'll be able to see lane lines next time around.