Sort of anyway. Took my little trip to the KFNGH this morning for my stress technetium test, it turned out it was 09:30 after all the earlier phone calls. As the procedure involve injecting a radioactive substance into your blood stream, the first thing they have to do is get a cannula into a vein in the back of your hand. Past experience has shown that trying this on my left hand where they seem to prefer putting them isn't overly successful with me - last time they tried this it took three very painful attempts on my left hand before they gave up and found a vein in the inside of my left elbow. This time at least, they only failed once on the left hand (it felt like they'd set my hand on fire) before trying my right which went in an absolute doddle. Next time, they will be pointed very firmly and directly to that side. Whilst they were doing all this, another nurse spent her time shaving my chest for the ECG sensors. It doesn't look great and AM really doesn't like the prickly effect for a couple of weeks afterwards.

The stress test itself was very straightforward. All they needed to do was get me up to 85% of my calculated maximum heart rate - max being 172 in my case (how do they work that out) and 85% being around 150 BPM. All in all it took about 11 minutes on the treadmill at which point they inject the technetium into the cannula. So once I'd eaten the obligatory cheese and cucumber sandwich they provide, it was off across the other side if the hospital to nuclear medicine.

The wander across KFNGH is always a rather pleasant little interlude, as there are gardens dotted around the place in between corridors and wards and so on. The sun was shining as always and the staff are rather friendly over there. For some reason, NM always seems to be tucked away in a corner, as if almost forgotten about. There's a quiet waiting area round there though and it did give me time to get my nose stuck back into the book I'm reading at the moment - Trudi Canavan's 'The High Lord'. Good escapist stuff when you're stuck around with nothing better to do till they're ready for you.

The scan itself involves nothing my than lying on your back for 15 minutes, then turning over and doing the same on your front for 10, whilst they run the scanner over you to pick up the stuff injected earlier. That done, it was out with the cannula, which for once I was allowed to do myself - blood runs out really fast when you don't put your pressure on it fast enough - easy enough to stop though. And that was that.

As always, I got slightly confused on the way back through the hospital to get back to where the car was parked - I always seem to find myself in a corridor that I shouldn't be in on the way back - but at least this time I didn't need help to work out where I'd gone wrong. I had to get petrol on the way back, but was concentrating so hard on spotting a filling-station, that I missed my turn on the way past the camel souk and ended up on the Dammam highway for 20 Km until I got to a junction I could retrace my steps from. At least it meant that I could go into somewhere for petrol that I don't normally use and get a shot of someone new for my 'Petrol Pump Attendants' series on flickr. I'll pop it on the bottom of this post later, once I've downloaded and processed it - I think I may have got one of the better ones today, but I'll know for sure once it's off the camera.

I have to go back on Saturday so that they can do the same scan, but without me needing to go on the treadmill. This will be a resting one, but still the same messing about with cannulas and 'glow in the dark' chemicals being introduced into my veins.

Now all I have to do is see if I can shake off the cold I seem to have acquired over the last couple of days. If it's not one thing, it's another as they say...

As promised then