Alphabet Challenge: X

I’ve signed onto The Blogging from A to Z April Challenge 2021.

The challenge is to blog the whole alphabet in April and write at least 100 words on a topic that corresponds to the letter of the day. 

Every day, excluding Sundays, I’m blogging about Places I Have Been. The last post will be on Friday, April 30 when I finally focus on the letter Z.

X: X-Ray Department

I believe the X-Ray/Radiology Department was in the basement of the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center where I was working but I’m not sure because I don’t remember going there on my own but usually following an entourage of white coats including the physician who was the head honcho studying a rare disease a couple of residents and a student or two and me the nurse practitioner taking up the rear happy to be part of this group and because I get to hear what the radiologist has to say when he points out the very subtle findings in the MRI or CAT scan or whatever x-ray the patient has had hoping

to identify if the disease being studied was causing the symptom that the patient was having so much so that he and his family came all this way from whatever state to get a diagnosis and they are upstairs in the waiting room on pins and needles hoping for clarification but I have been around this Institute long enough to know that most times there is no definitive answer and when the patient and his family hear that the diagnosis is inconclusive and look downhearted the primary investigator says that sometimes no diagnosis is better than a horrible one with no cure but that doesn’t make the patient or family feel better and I am sad for them because I know how much they wished to hear that their ailment had a name and a cure and they are disappointed to have traveled all the way to the NIH to get no answers however I still feel honored to be part of this research project although the part I play is rote but necessary in moving the research study along even if I don’t have a PhD in a research specialty nor am I one of the leading investigators in this important study I hope my nursing contribution has been helpful and I find out after I have given my notice and leave to follow my husband to another state because he has a new job that my position was filled by two nurse practitioners.