The last two weeks at work/clinicals have been absolutely crazy!!! If you hadn't heard western Kentucky(well the whole state and some surrounding states) was hit hard with an ice storm. The hospital ran on generators for about three days due to the power outage. Both of the CT scanners are hooked up to generators so the department was completely operational the whole time. The hospital has been at maximum capacity the entire time so we have been busy busy busy!

I'm going to tell you about an outpatient I did last week that I found very interesting. A 80 year old female patient came in for a CT scan of her head, chest, abdomen, and pelvis with contrast. The tests were ordered by her oncologist. The patient had a history of breast cancer with a masectomy and was suffering symptoms of acute memory loss and confusion. She kept repeating herself and asking the same questions over and over. We scanned her brain without first, as we do on all brains that are ordered with contrast. We then injected the contrast and scanned her chest/abdomen/pelvis, then repeated the brain with the contrast. The first brain without looked like a normal 80 something year old brain, but the post contrast images of the brain were very different. It showed a tumor/mass, possibly metastatic disease in the posterior cerebrum. It was so bright and distinctively seen on the post images. I went back and looked at the pre contrast images trying to find it, I saw where it was but only because I had seen the post images. A radiologist probably would have seen it in the pre but without the post images I would have never seen any abnormalities.