Well that was weird...

So yes I have been overdoing it recently and the result has been a couple of nasty bleeds from my lungs-not much fun at all. So to make sure that they have stopped bleeding and that there is not some underlying reason for these bleeds that is not due to my CF, Dr Howarth sent me for a lung CT scan. Now I've had CT's before of my sinuses, but never one that involved using a dye. I turn up not realising that I would have to have dye injected into me so had not told the CT people about my crappy veins... The day before it had a taken a couple of attempts to get a long line into my arm vein and so one elbow has the line in it and the other is a swollen, inflammed lump of soreness from where we failed to get the line in and hit tissue instead- and no one was going anywhere near that with any more needles! Luckily the wonderful CT doctor got a venflon (tiny little mini iv line) into one of the veins on my wrist so more trauma and bruises were averted.

Now, to have a lung CT you have to lie on your back with your hands above your head in the CT machine (which is rather like an enourmous ring donut) with your line connected up to a remote infusion pump that will fill you full of dye when the CT machine is ready-a really odd way to spend 20 minutes! Whilst this is going on the CT doctor is next door to avoid getting irradiated chatting to you through the speaker. The weirdest part tho has got to be when they actually inject you with the full shot of the dye. Apparently the dye is iodine based as this stands out as bright white on the X rays and its side effects are really odd. First you can feel it travel down your arm into your body, which is weird enough, then you suddenly have a massive hot flush and feel convinced that you've just been lowered into a large bath of warm water-I am not joking! I could have sworn that I had just been dropped hot water except I clearly had not! Then to finish things off you get this very strong metallic taste of tin. Now I have not idea what tin does taste like but that's just what my brain identified this taste as.... All in all a really odd way to spend a morning.