Bone Marrow Biopsy

I am now officially enrolled in the Mezi-Dara-dex clinical trial! I made it! My first treatment is scheduled for Monday, October 30, followed every week on Mondays for the next two months. 

However, I needed to go in for one more test beforehand: a bone marrow biopsy. So Friday morning I went into Dana Farber for this procedure.

Let me tell you about this. I laid flat on my stomach while the procedure nurse, Melissa, probed for the right spot on my hip bone to insert the "instrument".  Here is what it looks like:

This device sports a needle that seems to be much longer than it should be! 

The first thing she did was to inject a local anesthetic, first into the muscle, and then deeper into the bone. So far so good. Not too bad yet.

Now I've had these bone marrow biopsies several times before, but it has been quite a few years since my last one. The last time I took some drugs ahead of time to ease the pain. I was able to do that since Gretchen was there to drive me home. 

Now that I am alone and hadn't arranged for someone to drive me back afterward, I decided to tough it out like a he-man and do it cold turkey. Maybe it's like women giving birth. They forget how painful it was the last time, so they do it again, or so I'm told.

The thing is, once this instrument of torture dives deep into the bone marrow, the anesthetic doesn't really help. Multiple samples have to be taken and the marrow has to be sucked out. It's quite painful and time-consuming. To make things worse, I had also volunteered for them to take extra samples for research purposes. Duh!

Melissa (the torturer) kept saying, "I'm almost done". I don't know how many times she said that...I lost count. As I lay there gasping for breath, I was mentally kicking myself for trying to macho this out, or maybe I was actually kicking myself... I don't remember. 

After it was over, I clambered unsteadily off the torture rack and staggered out of the chamber with my undershirt hanging out of my pants. I didn't care. Next time, just give me drugs, lots of them!