CAT Scan

Tuesday June 4, 1991

Awoke at 5:45 to set the alarm for 7 a.m. Frank jumps out of bed. He'd fallen back asleep after turning off alarm. At 7 a.m. I am exhausted but must get up. My CAT scan is at 9:30 in Woodland Hills. Nothing to eat allowed before.

My CAT scan is done in a mobile unit behind the hospital. I can have all my clothes on. The table is narrow--no room for my arms alongside. My arms have to be overhead but my shoulders ache and I have to lower them sometimes. I had to drink 16 oz of yellow stuff last night and 16 oz this morning. Now the nurse is giving me a drip IV while I'm on the table for imaging. The X-rays take about 1/2 hour. I'm finished in 1 hour. No ill side effects from the contract I drank except diahrrea and none from the IV.

I treat myself to lunch at Coco's. Then have a mammogram at Granada Hills. Bank and DMV for my new drivers license (lost mine). I'm exhausted. Body aches all over. Just want to go to bed. Pay bills, fix dinner. Tylenol makes me feel alot better and we stay up til 11:20.

CAT scan or CT scan stands for Computerized Axial Tomography. It is an x-ray procedure that combines many x-ray images with the aid of a computer to generate cross-sectional views and, if needed, three-dimensional images of the internal organs and structures of the body. A large donut-shaped x-ray machine takes x-ray images at many different angles around the body. These images are processed by a computer to produce cross-sectional pictures of the body. In each of these pictures the body is seen as an x-ray "slice" of the body, which is recorded on a film.

No wonder mom is exhausted after going for her CAT scan, mammogram, the bank and DMV. Just going to the DMV would exhaust me. The wait there is endless and in So. California you can easily spend 3 hours in line. Mom had better start getting her rest! No more of this staying up past 11:00.