Another try, and another failure. I should have known this second attempt at a spinal tap/lumbar puncture wasn't going to go well because I had a bad omen this morning at work.
I ran an infomercial for Ron Popeil's knives.
Do I blame Ron for the outcome of my spinal tap? Well, maybe in an indirect way. See, he's got this thing he sells with the knives (and Showtime Rotisseries, when that infomercial is on). It's called a Solid Flavor Injector. Basically, this fukka's a huge hypodermic that you can stuff with things like pimientos, garlic cloves and maybe even duck and chicken so you can make your own special holiday Turducken. Once the Injector is stuffed, you use it to stuff your food with the stuff the Injector is stuffed with. (Crazy stuff, I know.) Anyway, this thing just unmade my day with the talk of all the injecting it does. One other thing I got queasy over was a guy talking about how great the knives on this infomercial were. "It went straight through my ribs," he said of one knife, not realizing the seed of horror he'd placed in housewives everywhere. It reminded me of the old Tonight Show skit where Ed Ames
almost castrated a cardboard cowboy.
This time around, my puncture didn't quite feel like castration, but it may have come close (I wouldn't know since I've never had the displeasure). There was quite a wait for a nurse. If we'd gone for the nurse they wanted, we might well have still been waiting We couldn't break her away from CT scans. But I got Bridget. Perky, funny, maybe a little maternal. Made the whole ordeal a little easier.
And there were some changes, besides the fluoroscopy. My vitals were constantly being tracked: a blood pressure cuff around my left arm, and a heart monitor around my thumb. I had an IV drip going (with a little sugar in it, according to Bridget). I got the royal treatment today. They shaved some back hair! Not that I have much, mind you, but just enough to need a shave. I couldn't convince them to take a little off the sides while they had the clipper going.
First, they gave me a pillow. Folded up, doubled with another one, flat...didn't make a difference. I settled for the near-suffocation of a single pillow. I had to lie as flat as possible, and that's not easy under these circumstances.
As expected, the injection (daah!) of Lidocaine was the hard part. Only I got the woozy, pass-out feeling out of the way well before that. In fact, I did it twice. Once before the procedure and once after. The Lidocaine, an anesthetic, did cause pain as it went in. But there was enough to make the rest of the procedure almost bearable. And that was a good thing.
This second attempt was really two in one. First, the doctor tried a shorter needle, which got him right where he needed to be, but the needle was just too short to go in all the way. Oops. Let's try a longer one. Nope. That one bent as it went deeper in.
"We'll have to try another area."
"All right. I'm here now, so we might as well."
So we did. We did what the Air Force used to tell us to do and aimed higher. Same results. Close, but no El Producto. So I'm left to my neurologist to decide which other hospital to go to for a
third tap/puncture. And this one ought to be real special. I can't tell you how much I'll be looking forward to it...because I'm not.
Right now I'm looking forward to sleeping through the thunderstorms we're supposed to get soon, and going on with life tomorrow. Maybe I'll see you then.
