Unusual Case

Today I saw an unusual case, or at least unusual to me. We scanned an abdomen pelvis on a twenty two year old female . Her diagnosis was frequent UTI's. She had no prior studies done. This was her first CT. When we saw the images come up, both of her kidneys looked awful! She had tons of cysts all over both of her kidneys. You could hardly see the kidneys themselves because of all of the cysts. Most of the cysts were substantial in size. I have heard of polycystic kidney disease and wondered if this was such a case. We also noticed her liver had numerous small dense areas as well. It almost looked like the cysts were spreading to the liver. Our radiologist looked at the images and suspected more than just kidney cysts. This was a good case for me to see, although I was sad for the patient. This semester has been a great learning experience for me. I look forward to next semester, but I am ready for Christmas Break!!

Scanner Down!!

This past week was interesting. Less than half way through Wednesday, our CT scanner just quit working! Everything just froze!! What a helpless feeling when you have a whole day ahead of you with patients every fifteen to twenty minutes!
As it turned out, we had to call Keith , our CT repair man. He showed up quickly, but had to order and replace a part in the scanner. So, we had to cancel the rest of the days schedule, and add all of those patients on for the next day. Sounds pretty simple, but our next day was already booked! Boy, was Thursday a busy day! We knew Wednesday night that we had better get a good nights sleep because Thursday would be non stop! To my surprise, it went remarkably well considering the circumstances. We had no biopsies scheduled , so that helped reduce the stress some. We worked efficiently and our teamwork payed off, and I got to scan quite a bit as well.

Bone Work

I have been enjoying bone work in CT lately. I think the detail in the bone work is awesome. We have had a few challenges recently with elbows! For some reason, patients that need elbows scanned lately have been rather large patients. This can pose a challege in the CT scanner, especially if they have limited range of movement with the elbow. I am learning how important improvising is in these cases. Can the patient keep the elbow straight down by their side in the AP position? If not, can they go head first in the scanner in the "superman" pose with affected elbow stretched out above their head? Can you get the elbow in the SFOV? ( Especially without them falling off the couch!) That is the ultimate challenge with certain patients. It is great to learn little tricks and tid bits of knowledge from seasoned techs! I still have so much to learn! I can't believe we only have a few weeks left in this semester.

Overwhelmed in CT

I think I am on information overload! I am unable to be in CT all of the time. I usually get two days per week in CT while the other three are spent in x-ray. I learn best by repetition and sometimes going back and forth between modalities does not help in this area. I have taken great notes and use them as references a lot. Learning protocols and reading scripts to make sure the patients symptoms and diagnosis meet the scan that has been ordered, is constant confusion! I work with two CT techs that have done CT for many years. They are great at what they do, but sometimes I feel that no matter how much I have learned, it is never enough for them. They can scan really fast, and I know I slow them down when I am scanning. Somedays I walk out of there pretty discouraged.

Last week, I got a real eye opener! We do radiation treatment planning with the oncology department . We had a breast cancer patient that was middle age that had recently been diagnosed, and was getting ready to start treatments. As we scanned, we were shocked at what we saw. This patient's breast cancer was so invasive, it had ate through her sternum. Her skin on the lateral side of her armpit down her ribcage was red, inflamed and oozing. The smell was horrid! We were stunned and confused as to why she waited so long to go to the doctor. She had to know something was wrong many months ago or longer! Obviously this patient had been in denial for quite some time. They are unable to do surgery at this point, because it has become so invasive. Their hope is to shrink it, but her prognosis is grim.. The oncology team said it was one of the worst cases they had seen in years.

Update of CT Progress

The past few weeks have been very informative in my CT training. As I said before, we are an outpatient facility so we don't see much trauma. The past few weeks we have had more bone work than ususal. I am amazed at the detail of bone that CT shows. I have been able to scan a few feet, two wrists, a few spines, and an elbow. Sometime it is a challenge getting the patient in the correct position for the scan due to their injuries. The elbow was interesting since the patient had just came from ortho and had his elbow in a soft cast stabilized in a bent position. We finally placed him head first in a "swimmers position" to enable the elbow close the center of the scanner. We got great images. I have been able to scan a few lumbar spine myelogram patients and one disc-o-gram. With the disc-o-gram, I have been learning how to angle the scanner parallel to the plane of the discs of interest. We also scanned a cancer patient's humerus for bone mets. I am still learning to do coronal and sagittal reformats on bone work. Sometimes it is confusing, because of different doctors requesting different reformats. I believe constant repetition is the key to learning and becoming more efficient in the field of CT.

First week of clinicals 414

I can't believe fall semester has begun! I work at Innervision Advanced Medial Imaging in Lafayette, Indiana. I began working here the week after I graduated from Ivy Tech College in May 2007. I am currently working in xray , special procedures and the CT department. I can't believe there is so much to learn in CT. I am enjoying it because every day is a new learning experience. We don't see much trauma since we are an outpatient facility. We see alot of cancer patients since we have a cancer treatment center located on our campus. This is my second semester of clincals. I am finally getting comfortable with the basic scans. I have two great seasoned CT techs that have many years of experience in CT. I feel priviledged to learn from them. I plan to take my CT registry next summer. I am looking forward to this semester and hearing about my classmates individual experiences.

I am also married with two sons that are practically grown. My youngest will graduate this coming May. We have two dogs, Bailey and Ernie. Between working full time, going to school and taking care of the family, I don't have much time for anything else right now.