CT Scan

I took Maria up to Sioux Falls for her CT scan this morning. Let me just mention again that Sanford Children's Hospital is really a beautiful facility and every staff person we have met there has been great. It was interesting that I needed to sign in with security and wear a lanyard with an identification badge while I was in the hospital area. I haven't had to do that before and Maria was a frequent flier at the children's hospital in Michigan.

Miss Maria has huge hospital related anxiety (not from anything anyone here has done, this is from experiences prior to her adoption). On a scale of 1 to 10, she is an 11 in this area. Her general hospital anxiety is only outweighed by her anxiety about people accessing her port. This one is off the charts high. Well, as soon as we got to the room, the nurse came in to talk about needing access for the dye for the scan. Now using her port would make the most sense, but Maria absolutely flipped out about that idea.

A child life specialist soon joined us. I'm not sure if she just goes to every patient when they come in or if they sent her to us specially because Maria was so upset. We did put numbing cream on several spots on her arms as well as her port. I was going to call Nurse Lisa so she could tell Maria that it would be okay for someone else to access her port (in Maria's opinion, Nurse Lisa is the authority over all things medical and particularly over her port) only to discover that I don't have her number in my cell phone.

Fortunately, the nurse was able to get access in her arm, so we didn't need to access the port after all. The scan also went smoothly. As soon as we were leaving the hospital, Maria was back to her happy self. We stopped at McDonald's for lunch. I find that a big intake of fat and salt helps with recovery from anxious situations. We should hear the results of the scan in the next few days.