C-Spine: Check!

Today is the first day (in MONTHS) that I have a day off and don't feel guilty about it! Our school was closed today for consortium meetings, so rad tech students got a free pass to miss clinicals! Yay! I toyed with the idea of going into work to get a few hours but then decided that a nice, relaxing day of lounging at home would be much more beneficial to the pocket full of change I would earn at work. Don't get me wrong, I still REALLY enjoy my job, but I'm not exactly performing brain surgery so the pay is a bit dismal. And I'm ok with that - it's all about the experience and contacts anyway!

The past couple of weeks in the program have been good. I've had two tests in my Exposure II class (both As, thank you very much!), and one test in my Contrast Procedures class (100! Woo!). While I understand that it's necessary to learn about the x-ray tube, how it works and why the electrons do what they do for the registry, I have to admit that I am not interested in the LEAST. I think our instructor gets the vibe because he is constantly making jokes about how "exciting" this subject matter is and how he only teaches it because there "could" be questions on the registry pertaining to Target Interactions. :) I give him props for doing his best, but the class I really look forward to this quarter is Contrast Procedures.

I have mentioned on here a couple of times how the days I spend at clinical are fluoro days. Since October, I have been setting up the room and watching fluoro cases without a CLUE of what the radiologist is looking for, why the patient must drink different types of Barium and how this all pertains to the RT. My Contrast Procedures class is telling me anything and everything I ever wanted to know about fluoro. (For those who might not be familiar with fluoro, it is basically "real-time" x-rays of internal organs. These x-rays are taken by the radiologist who is administering barium to the patient. Because organs are not easily seen on normal x-rays, the barium coats the organs and helps us to visualize any abnormalities.) The exams we have learned about in class so far have been the barium swallow (also called an esophogram), upper gastrointestinal study (UGI), small bowel series and barium enema (BE). My family has a history of gastrointestinal problems, so I take great interest in learning about the exams that I (or family members) might be asked to complete one day. :)

Last week at clinical, I F-I-N-A-L-L-Y comped on my C-Spine. I don't think I have ever been more relieved. The patient that I comped on was in a lot of pain, and I was worried that I would not be able to get her shoulders down so that we could see the all important C7/T1 junction on the lateral projection. To make sure I got it on the first try, I handed her a sandbag, and even though she was in pain, she handled it like a trooper! As soon as I said we got the shot, she dropped the bag, and we moved onto the next shot. She was wonderfully patient. Another C-Spine exam came in after hers, and the requisition stated that we were ruling out "cervical radiculitis." None of the techs had ever heard this term, so we assumed it was a typo. When we looked at the films, it appeared that the patient's C5 and C6 vertebrae were fused together or compressed. When I got home later that night, I looked up cervical radiculits, and that's exactly what it was: compressed vertebrae which pinches a nerve. Now that I've knocked my C-Spine comp out, I'm moving on to the L-Spine. The L-Spine is not a difficult exam to do, however my outpatient clinic doesn't see many orders for them.

We received our clinical assignments for the rest of the program, and I am very happy. Next quarter, I will be rotating at a smaller hospital about 10 minutes from my house. That means that my days of waking up at 5:00 am are numbered - for awhile at least.

Have a great week!