Having my head examined

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AnotherFairportfan
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Having my head examined

Post by AnotherFairportfan »

Some personal medical stuff:

Yesterday (8 December) i went in to have my head examined.

I have enlarged parotid (salivary) glands - not so much (or as painful to the touch) as they were a few weeks ago, when the condition first brought itself to my attention, but still enlarged and tender to the touch.

Dr Fogarty prescribed a course of steroids, and antibiotics, to cover possible infection and such, but it didn't help.

After a few fumbles on the doctor's office's part in getting me a referral, i finally was able to get in, yesterday, for a CT scan.

One of the delays was that the doc ordered a lab test to make sure that my kidneys could handle the iodine dye they were gonna shoot me up with for contrast. I got the lab work done at the county government's employee health services clinic - no charge for Hall County Employees or their dependents - and somehow the results did not get to the imaging center. They called Fogarty's office, and all THEY had from the lab was "Yep, we tested him all right" with no indication of the result. SO the tech had to draw blood for a lab test there, which added half an hour or more to the time i was there.

Results came back "GO", so ...

First scan, no dye.

Lie down, cot i'm lying on slides into the maw of the CT scanner, "Do Not Look Into Laser With Remaining Eyeball" (apparently it uses a laser to scan surface contours or something). In a clear window running all the way around the wall of the tunnel i'm in, THINGS start spinning around like something out of a cheap SF movie and then we're done and i slide back out.

I had a problem.

I had not eaten in like fifteen hours or so, so i was getting low sugar, and there was no support for my left arm. (My right arm was supported, because that was where the IV for the dye to be injected was.) The combination of low sugar and having to hold my arm in the air unsupported for five or more minutes had it shaking badly enough that my whole body was shaking to some extent.

Solution to that was to use what i suspect is used for patients who are unconscious or otherwise not able to hold their arms in place - a lightweight, velcro-closure sort of vest that wraps around the arms and chest loosely but securely.

Then it was time to pump me full of iodine, wait a while, and it was "Chocks Away" and i slid in again.

I waited a while before the reactionless-drive components began spinning - and just as it began he said "Hold your breath"

I happened to be exhaling.

After approximately two eternities while i contemplated the joys of hypoxia (or would it be anoxia?) i began sliding out and he said "Oh - you can breathe now."

I not being in any way Houdini-like, he unstrapped my arms, helped me to sit up and told me to be sure to stay well-hydrated the rest of the day, as my kidneys were going to be getting rid of the dye and i didn't need to make them any madder at me than they were gonna be anyway.

He gave me various paperwork, including a form telling me where i could request a CD with the scan result on it (you may see some of that here), and said they'd get the results to Fogarty's office as quickly as may be.

I have an appointment next Thursday (15 December) to go consult with the doc about what we found.

While i am not really worrying about it, it occasionally occurs tome that it was cancer of the salivary glands that took Roger Ebert from us...

[hr]
A neat bit about the whole thing is that obviously they are aware that - if what they're scanning for is anywhere much below your chin - as when they scanned me for my appendicitis diagnosis a couple years back - you're gonna be spending quite a bit of time lying on your back with your head outside the tunnel, staring at the ceiling, which is boring.

And, since, needing a good source of light in the room, preferably glare-free, there is a Very Large fluorescent-light fixture built into the ceiling in the middle, directly over the CT scanner. But even if it is essentially glare-free. lying there staring up into it could be ... less than optimal.

So, it's designed to have the opposite effect from lying-there-not-moving-for-five-or-ten-minutes-staring-up-into-a-bright-white-light:

Image

{This is the end they stuff you into head-first. The other side has an opening two or three times as big.}
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Dave
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Re: Having my head examined

Post by Dave »

That's a very nice skylight!

Did you have mumps as a child? or the MMR vaccine? Even if you did have it as a child, a second mild infection later in life is not unknown... and with so many parents choosing not to have their children vaccinated, there have been mumps outbreaks in recent years.

Definitely hoping that whatever is going on with your parotid glands is benign and of a short duration.
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AnotherFairportfan
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Re: Having my head examined

Post by AnotherFairportfan »

Dave wrote:That's a very nice skylight!
A sky light; as i said, that's a big florescent light fixture.
Did you have mumps as a child? or the MMR vaccine? Even if you did have it as a child, a second mild infection later in life is not unknown... and with so many parents choosing not to have their children vaccinated, there have been mumps outbreaks in recent years.

Definitely hoping that whatever is going on with your parotid glands is benign and of a short duration.
Don't believe i had it, and i'm old enough i don't think it was a standard childhood vaccination - but i quite possibly may got it in the hellbrew the Navy shot me up with in boot camp.
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Dave
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Re: Having my head examined

Post by Dave »

AnotherFairportfan wrote:Don't believe i had it, and i'm old enough i don't think it was a standard childhood vaccination - but i quite possibly may got it in the hellbrew the Navy shot me up with in boot camp.
Yeah, the vaccine came along just a few years too late for me, and I did catch mumps during one of its periodic rampages through the schools in our area. Unfortunately for us all, neither the vaccine, nor having had mumps as a child provides 100% immunity, and mumps is quite contagious.

According to the CDC, the US is in its worst mumps season in more than a decade.
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AnotherFairportfan
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Re: Having my head examined

Post by AnotherFairportfan »

Hell - my generation is the last one whose mothers worried themselves sick about polio every summer...
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chicgeek
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Re: Having my head examined

Post by chicgeek »

Several years back, I had trouble with my salivary glands. Had no idea, thought it was lymph nodes until I went to the doc. Hard, swollen, painful. Turns out they were blocked! I hadn't been drinking enough water, was dehydrated, and apparently sometimes that causes the blockage.
No cat scan. Got a prescription of some sort, and told to have a lot of hard candy to suck on, like lemon drops-as well as drink more water! And it cleared up after a bit.
So, that's an odd thing I had no idea happened. Hope your problem isn't serious and that it clears up quickly!
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AnotherFairportfan
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Re: Having my head examined

Post by AnotherFairportfan »

There can also be stones in the ducts.
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TazManiac
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Re: Having my head examined

Post by TazManiac »

FP,

My regular PC is 'offline' as I fix stuff, and so my day to day replies are hit and miss for the next little bit but I wanted to wish you well in your prognosis, and relate (what I hope will be) an amusing anecdote...

It was the late 70's and I was living w/ Pops; he of the perennial curmudgeonly aspect and 'unique way of doing, everything', and the evening before he was to go into to be tested for some suspicious polyps that had developed in his throat, that was when he decided it might be time to loop me in on how things where going.

Not much a halfgrown teen can respond at that point but "huh". (Not 'Huh?, but more a simple acnowledgment of 'Hmmm', or 'ah hah'...)

Note: Inflection over the Interwebz leaves much to be desired.

Turns out, the next day, after letting it simmer on the back burner as to 'What Could Be Wrong?' and 'Whats Going to Happen to Dad?' he turns back up with a further report:
"I went to get ready to go to my appointment, and like the other times I started coughing (an apparent symptom that led him to the original inquiry), "And I coughed & Coughed and something snapped loose and... I swallowed it."
'huh'. :?: :?

Here's hoping it's interesting, but not too interesting and I encourage you to 'chew gum & spit a lot'. :D
Last edited by TazManiac on Thu Dec 15, 2016 2:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Catawampus
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Re: Having my head examined

Post by Catawampus »

AnotherFairportfan wrote:There can also be stones in the ducts.
In your particular case, I'm going to assume that it is. . .a family of hibernating lemmings. Yeah.
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Dave
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Re: Having my head examined

Post by Dave »

TazManiac wrote:
"I went to get ready to make my appointment, and like the other times I started coughing (an apparent symptom that led him to the original inquiry), "And I coughed & Coughed and something snapped loose and... I swallowed it."
'huh'. :?: :?
I sorta wonder whether he might have had a case of tonsoliths ("tonsil stones").

These are off-white (usually) lumps of nasty gunk, sometimes heavily calcified, which can build up inside the clefts and grooves of the tonsils... the result of bacterial action on bits of leftover food. They can grow to the size of a pencil eraser or larger, and can be large enough to be distinctly uncomfortable (feel like a lump in the throat, or cause soreness in the tonsils). There have been some extreme cases where they've grown large enough to make it difficult for the sufferer to swallow.

They're often expelled naturally and swallowed, and coughing can be the trigger that forces them out.
Catawampus wrote:In your particular case, I'm going to assume that it is. . .a family of hibernating lemmings. Yeah.
Are those the ones which are, or are not prone, to jump en masse from a cliff?
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Atomic
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Re: Having my head examined

Post by Atomic »

Dave wrote:I sorta wonder whether he might have had a case of tonsoliths ("tonsil stones").
Oh, ick. I had those a lot as a kid through my 20s. When ever I (often) had a cold, I'd usually get a scratchy sore throat and bad breath. The way my tonsils were laid out, I could look into a mirror an yawn, and see them, complete with a constellation of pea sized stones at the back of my throat. Lots of gargling and pressing on the side of my throat up under the chin would often pop them out and help clear up the problem. Of course, now the raw tonsils were sore for the effort, but things cleared up pretty quickly after that.

Years later I had tonsillectomy and life was much better.
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