Well that… sucked.

We got there and waited in the waiting room for a while. Then we got called by a nurse to go to a Radiology room. I got changed into a funny apron thing (but my shirt and socks were still on), and sat down on the big x-ray table. And we waited. I’m glad DH was there because we had to wait quite a while and he kept me occupied… although his way of occupying me was somewhat annoying. (He kept touching things, picking things up, and I was like, “For god’s sake, put that down!” Such a child sometimes, LOL) Finally our RE arrived – and it was the same RE that we had our consultation with. So yay. :)

Okay so she explains the process again to me, all is fine. I scoot my ass down to the end of the table, she puts in a speculum and swipes my cervix with a cloth thing to clean it – three times. I don’t like my cervix being swiped or pushed or anything. But, no worse than a pap. She inserts the catheter, that felt a little weird. Then she inflated it. That felt weirder. Like a little pressure. Then she removed the speculum – which felt very weird, because she had to disentangle it from the catheter and syringes, and that caused a bit of bouncing and tugging at my cervix, not so fun.

Then I got to watch on the screen as she injected the dye. The radiologist – an older German man – was there watching the screen and explaining things to me (in a thick German accent) and they were talking to each other about what they saw. The dye pooled up in my uterus, then my left tube quickly spilled out into my abdominal cavity. The right tube you could only see a little bit. And then the catheter popped out and there was spillage. Uh-oh.

So then the fun part – they decided to try it again, just to see if they could get a better view of my right tube. So I scootch down again, another speculum, another three swipes of cleaning stuff, another catheter inserted. Speculum removed again. And then she inflated the catheter balloon… but more this time than last (to make sure it stayed and didn’t slip out again). THAT hurt. Felt like a lot of pressure, little stabbing pain. After some fiddling with things they inserted more dye. I wasn’t feeling good, I looked over to Den and he took my hand and squeezed it reassuringly. I was trying to relax and just breathe but it hurt. The radiologist saw my look and asked if I was okay, I said it hurt a bit. So they tried to hurry a little more. So again they saw the dye through my left tube and pooling in my uterus, a little of my right tube. But the previous dye that had spilled into my abdominal cavity had settled on my right side by then in a little pocket, making it even harder to see my right tube. They had me roll a little to my left then my right and then stay there propped up on the side. But they ran out of dye in the syringe, even though they had a good angle. By then the pain was getting pretty bad so I think they decided to just leave it at that. Soon as they deflated the baloon and removed the catheter I felt much better, though still not great.

She said my left tube is great, and my right tube is probably just fine – she didn’t see a sign of blockage, just that the dye kept going to my left side instead of filling up my right. Stupid right tube! So we don’t know for sure that my right side is good, but she feels pretty confident that it’s fine.

If it had just been the first proceedure and it had worked right I would have walked away going, “Well that wasn’t very bad.” But that second time, arg. That hurt. Not like in a crying, freaking out kind of way, but definitely in a, “OW OW, get that thing out of me!!” kind of way. Not something I’d want to repeat.

I also asked her about my day 3 bloodwork and she said she couldn’t remember for sure (she didn’t have my chart with her) but she thinks it looked all fine. And she said if I wanted to know for sure I can give a call to the nurses and ask them about it. So I think I will in just a second after I relax a bit.