Pre-operation prep

The day before my operation, I had to go through a series of delightful events. First up was the blood work and then pre-operation RSL. According to Google, RSL involves sticking a radioactive substance right smack in the center of my target area. In layman's terms, it's like having a needle play pinball inside me with a radioactive ball.

So I checked my schedule and realized that the blood work was scheduled at Dana Farber in Newton, while the RSL was at Dana Farber Faulkner hospital in Jamaica Plain, with a measly half-hour gap between them. Now, I may have survived all the chemo like a superhuman, but teleportation isn't one of my superpowers. Sadly, I couldn't magically be in two places at once, especially not in half an hour.

After a hour on the phone (by this time it was evening and I was bounced between several schedulers) I was told that the blood work in Newton was cancelled and that I should just "drop by" Faulkner lab and that the hospital has my order and everything was now all set.

Fast forward to the next day -- Faulkner lab spent a hour trying to figure out first who I was, then if there was an order, and then trying to "unlock" that order. After an hour I walked away with no blood work, hoping that it would not be a crucial requirement for the next day's operation.

The second act of the play for the day was the radioactive insert. I found myself in a freezing room, half naked, feeling like a contestant in some survival reality show. I had to sit with a straight back in an uncomfortable chair in front of the ever fun mammogram machine that always feels like something out of a medieval torture chamber, but the real star of the show was the array of endless needles on a table. They could give any horror movie prop a run for its money, the only thing missing was the drill... I kept having flashbacks to all the mafia tortures in the basement from a few movies I watched while fatigued and in chemo brain fog.

The procedure itself wasn't a walk in the park, but not as scary as the buildup in my head waiting in that freezing room.