Things they don’t tell you before your CT

 

Before you report to the Hospital or Imaging Centre ¹ for your CT, you will be given a list of instructions.  Things to bring to the hospital, like a Health Card, ID, Copy of the Procedure Orders (if you’ve been given them), list of medications or the medications themselves, vitamins or natural supplements you take, that sort of stuff.  Bring them.  You will be told how to prepare for your study.  When to eat or to stop eating.  If you have to take a purgative.  What to take as a purgative.  When and how to take it.  Do what they say.  The folks who told you to do this stuff didn’t write the instructions for laughs.  You do it this way to make it easier for you, not easier for them. 

OK, some of the stuff makes it easier for them.  Bringing your vitamins and supplements and telling the nurses and techs about any allergies you have ahead of time means the these lovely people probably won’t have to deal with you having a reaction and screwing up the whole day.   Not just your whole day.  The tech’s day.  The nurses’ day.  The doctor’s day.  And the days of all the patients scheduled to have the test after you.   Don’t be ‘That Guy'.

In addition to all the very important stuff they do tell you, which includes why you are having the test, and what the side effects are, and what the risks may be, there are things they don’t tell you.  Well, sometimes they do tell you, but not always.  Why?  Well, because it’s not really that important in the grand scheme of things. 

Anyway, I’ve had some of these tests lots of times.  If I can help you not panic, I’m all for it.  I’m often the youngest person in the waiting area.  I try to calm the other patients down.  After all, if you are here to see exactly how bad off you are, isn’t it nice to see someone who has done it before?  

  

• Barium tastes bad. Orange flavor is a lie.  Whoever decided that abomination was ‘orange’ has clearly never eaten any form of citrus in his (or her) life.  And who decided ‘Orange’ was a palatable flavor for a thick liquid-metal-chalk thing anyway?
• The drink itself looks (initially) like milk.  Kinda.  If you squint.  It is thicker, almost thick milkshake consistency.  It does not taste good.  I have seen 2 men (or perhaps it was the same man twice) chug it.  They just some how opened up their throats and down it went.  One 500ml glass at a time.  Clearly this is an important skill. 
• Have tissues handy, and try not to lick your lips.  Ever notice that you do that when you drink?  Lick your lips after a sip?  Try it.  I’ll wait.  Did you get yourself a nice beverage.  Take a sip.  Then another.  Do you feel any fluid on your lips?  Did you lick it?  C’mon, you know you did. It must be a reflexive action.  Well, when you drink barium (or intestinal lav., for that matter) don’t  lick.  If you are at all like me, and odds are you may be, the taste is so unbelievably repulsive that the barium may come back up just a little bit.  And that’s bad.  Not because it will hurt you in some way.  No, it’s bad because you will have to drink another glass.  And the nurse/tech supervising will make that face.  You know the one. 
• Iodine may be used as a contrast agent, too.  It’s better than barium, in that you don’t taste it.  Right away.  It is a vascular contrast agent.  This means it will be injected. To see the vascular structures.  You know, the lovely little tubes that carry your blood around your body.  They are everywhere.  They are even in your tongue.  Yep.  But the part they don’t tell you about until you are strapped to the table with the stupid needle in your arm, is that the iodine will cause you to feel warm as it courses through you.  This is really neat, in that you can actually feel it moving through your body.  Those of you with medical experience, or practical patient experience, know what is coming.  You have lots of vascular structures in your lower abdomen and groin.  When the iodine hits, it will feel as if you are going to pee yourself.  And it will feel like you may have peed yourself.  You (probably) didn’t, it’s just a side effect of the contrast agent.  Just to be safe, always go to the bathroom before a CT.   
• As a courtesy, don’t look too closely at the patients coming out of the exam room.  They may be feeling a little self-conscious as they exit.
• According to one patient, the Iodine induced warming feels very much like a menopausal hot flash.  This may reassure you.  Or it may make you dread menopause.  Or it may give you empathy for menopausal women.
• Be nice.   I always try to be nice for my techs.  I wouldn’t want their job.  Yes, you are having a test, and yes, this is not a very good time for you.  They are here to help you, and they have some not particularly pleasant things they have to do.  However, in chatting with many techs,  I’ve found that we know the same people.  Although I now live in a good-sized city, I grew up in a small town.  
• Ask the techs if you should eat or avoid eating anything in particular after your test.  You will have been fasting, and may have also taken a purgative before hand.  Sometimes the contrast agents will have a residual after taste.  If they say to not eat something in particular, DO NOT EAT IT!    They are helping you here. 
• The barium follow through will be eliminated from your body.  It will not be painful, nor will it look like the sort of thing that is normally eliminated from your person.  Spackle?  Bird poop? Parging, possibly?  Don’t panic.

Well, ok, you can panic a little.    

1  I live in Canada.