PART TWO: ULTRASOUNDS

Ultrasound technicians should have a fairly happy job as far as hospital positions go.  They take pictures of babies and listen to everyone go “awww.”  The technician I got did not fit the mold.

It was time for Wednesday night skiing, my knee was sore, so of course I went anyways.    After a few runs it was apparent that my knee should be looked at and not skied on, so I hid it for the rest of the evening.  The next day after school I went to the doctor.  I feared anything with “ACL” and “surgery” in the diagnostic.   The doctor said it was one of two things, neither of which was all that bad.  He sent me to the hospital to get an ultrasound on it.

I had been hoping to make it to work still and an afternoon of waiting was making me anxious.  The tech finally took my mom and I into a dark little room and started the ultrasound.  I was looking at either six or eight weeks of recovery and was accepting of either.  I was pretty relaxed for someone waiting for a diagnosis.  That last bit of nerves in me caused me to be a little bit of the self depreciating comic that I turn into.  My tech wasn’t having any of it so I shut up for a while.  The chilled room was awkwardly quiet with only the beep of the machine.  I waited quietly as the guy studied my knee; and for having a small knee it took a long time.  The next set of beeps made me grin.  I waited for the beeps to go off again and excitedly grabbed my mom’s arm proclaiming that a heartbeat had been found!

I grinned, my mom laughed, the tech sat silent.  I stopped grinning, my mom continued to laugh, the tech turned off his machine.  He wouldn’t start again until I promised to take it seriously.  My job at this point was to have a knee to be scanned, my job didn’t require much along the lines of being serious.  I tried to explain, but he proceeded to tell me why I should not be goofing around and put a bit of fear into me with all the things he could find wrong that the doctor didn’t think of.  Finally when the inside of my cheeks were bleeding from biting them and trying not to laugh he turned the machine back on and restarted.  The machine beeped, I held my breath, my Mom lost it again.