First Week of Clinicals

This week has flown by for me! We were extremely busy in Cat Scan every night this week and while I can't seem to remember all the cool stuff I saw, one thing sticks out in my mind.

An order for an abdomen/pelvis with contrast on a 70 something year old woman complaining of abdominal pain came across and upon taking the patient's history, I found out that she had a history of breast cancer with a left mastectomy. At the time I didn't think to ask her how long she had been cancer free but now I wish I had. Anyway, I scanned the patient and was very dismayed to see her liver. It was absolutely eaten up with what looked like mets. It was so awful to walk back into the scan room and talk to the patient like absolutely nothing was wrong. I checked the report later that night and according to the Rad, there were too many spots to even count them correctly and they were HUGE. I have never seen mets this bad before. But that wasn't even the worse part, aside from the liver, there was also question of pancreatic and uterine masses in this patient. This all happened on Wednesday night and I found out on Thursday afternoon that this same patient was scheduled for a liver biopsy the next day. I feel so horrible for that patient and her family.

I have to say that's the worst part about this job. At least I know I got a good scan and hopefully made that patient feel as comfortable as possible.