I had my abdominal ultrasound today. If you’ve ever had an ultrasound, you suddenly understand my title 😛 For those of you that haven’t had one, I’ll explain the title in a moment.

I got there early, and very shortly after they’d opened, so I got back a bit early. I had to lie on my back with one arm over my head (switched arms because she did both sides), and there was lots of “take a small/normal/big breath and hold it.” I’m assuming the breathing was to get my diaphragm and ribs out of the way. Then I had to roll onto each side, because she imaged my kidneys (and she may have needed that angle for the liver). I also had to partially roll back onto my back, which is an awkward position to hold, by the way. My ribs are a bit sore because she had to push a bit while manipulating the wand so that my ribs weren’t interfering with the images.

Now, why the sticky and gooey? Well, ultrasound tests use a jelly for conducting the sound waves. Without the jelly, they don’t really work. They need to use a lot of jelly. It’s thick, kind of like hair gel. She imaged my entire abdomen, meaning lots of jelly. So I was completely sticky and gooey for quite some time. Spreading the leftover jelly out lets it soak in or evaporate or something… either way, it’s gone now. But you stay gooey for quite some time after the test is over.

I imagine, since it’s a Friday, I won’t have any results back until Tuesday at the earliest. The tech isn’t allowed to do anything other than tell me what the test does (like, “now I’m looking at your kidneys”). The images the tech gets are sent to a radiologist. The radiologist looks at the images, writes a report, and sends it to my doctor. I won’t have any results until after my doctor gets a chance to look at it. After tests like this, I get very nervous if the phone rings earlier than I expect it to. I know if something is troubling, they call ASAP. I’m hoping I won’t hear anything until Monday (if it’s a slow afternoon and morning, I suppose it’s possible). I’m kind of hoping they find something that answers my nausea issues, and that it’s easy to fix. This white rabbit sure is taking me down one heck of a hole.