DOUGHNUT SCANNERS

DOUGHNUT SCANNERS

To get some internal pics, every 6 months or so, the meds stick a needle in me and shove me through a big doughnut; last week, I was pleased to find that the boffins in the nuke lab had been given a shiny new doughnut which had presumably been cooked in fresh oil. I was pleased, because with extra magnets it worked even faster than the old one and consequently the chances of me exploding were greatly reduced. There is nothing dangerous about these doughnuts but there is a computerized voice which tells you to hold your breath as you move through the machine and then tells you to breathe normally when it has finished that particular run. This would be fine if I had trained as an oyster diver or my close family were dolphins, but as neither is the case, I invariably find myself turning various shades of red, swelling up and cursing "the bitch" who made the recording. I got to wondering just how they deal with people who have limited lung function (you know – sick people) and whether they get blurred images as the poor souls start gasping for breath before they are told they can live again.

The other alternative is that "the bitch" is programmed to calculate the time delay according to your AP index which is set by your consultant. I have come to the conclusion that the AP index is open to all types of abuse by hospitals; for example, it can be used to determine neatness of stitching, number of injections and or enemas, nil by mouth duration and any number of other things which affect your happiness. My Cancer Wizard doesn’t realize that I can read upside down so he doesn’t know that I spotted that he had given me an Awkward Patient index of 9.8. Me and my bloody mouth.

On Thursday, I’ll be off to see CW again to get the results of the scan and after maybe 15 or so such tête-à–tête’s over the years (scans used to be far more frequent) I very much take the view that every one is a bonus. The very first one could easily have seen me logging on to the celestial internet and borrowed time is so much sweeter than the ordinary stuff. Que sera sera.