The Making of a Superhero

It's not all that glamorous, but here's how it happened. For me at least. See, I took a wrong turn at the Exit in the hospital one day. If you'll notice, the exit sign has an arrow pointing to the left. Well, obviously I saw the shiny green exit sign, but then quickly got distracted by the BIG blue arrow pointing in the opposite direction, and the next thing I knew I was in the nuclear medicine department, wondering "How in the world did I get here? I had no idea I was that smart."

I took a seat, filled out a few papers. Thought they were just really easy tests. Name, date of birth, what kind of drugs am I on...that sort of thing. Turned them in and got called back to what must have been a super secret nuclear medicine room, because there were stickers on the door that sort of reminded me of the Mr. Yuk stickers you're supposed to put on stuff you want to scare the little ones away from. Yeah, it was scary. But I'm not going to lie; it was also cool. I felt a little bit like Julie Bond 006.9, especially after they brought out the super secret nuclear medicine radioactive shot in such a spiffy tube.

Notice the technician is wearing gloves. And she thought I had nice veins. Well, I've heard that before. (My arms look like a freaking iguana, if you ask me.) I'd like to point out that it is really hard to multifunction when one function is to not look at the needle stabbing into your arm and the other one is to take a picture to document said stabbing. And while chewing gum, to keep from tasting tin.

Then it's lights, camera, action. Time for the photo shoot of my heart, to make sure it still has a groovy beat, as the Chemo Cocktail I am on, Herceptin, can sometimes mess with the way it works. I get one of these MugaScans every three months while I am on it; and I am on it for a year, which ends just before Christmas, God willing. Practically all the pieces of equipment you can see in the picture swivel and then hover over me to make sure I have no personal space, and then they do three ten minute scans of different views of my heart.

My heart really is usually quite introverted and camera shy, but after three of these I think it stepped up to the plate like a champ today. Ready to face the paparazzi. Ready to say "Cheese" for three photo shoots, one right after the other. And then the swiveling and hovering of the equipment began. And right before my very eyes, the flashing screen said; Status: (and in red, flashing allcaps): EXECUTING

That is just not something you want to see on the screen hovering above you. Ever. And with a great big white button that says STOP that you can't reach because your hands are strapped so they don't swivel away with the equipment that has swiveled to surround you, completely boxing you in.

But as you can see I made peace with the situation. And I got three 10-minute catnaps in the process. Superpowers are exhausting I tell you.

And here's the card they handed me on the way out the door. My Superhero membership card, explaining my radioactivity, which I take, is basically my license to set off airport security gates and such. All in the name of fighting evil of course. I've seen Spiderman, and I know the mantra, "With great power, comes great responsibility." Not to mention, it's written on the back of our Superhero membership cards now. So no worries. Hehe.

Well I drove like a madwoman to get home before the transformation took. In my experience, you never know how the superpowers will manifest. Luckily I did make it home just in time. My poor kids had to witness the event, but thankfully they kept their heads about them and grabbed my new iPhone to snap a picture.

After a morning like that, my first superpower surfaced: a superduperpowernap.

The rest, I'm sorry to say, is classified, but as you can see it is 1:35 as I type this, and I am just turning in for the night, fully exhausted from a very superpower-full day.

superCheers and superLove,

superJoules