Purple people eater

If I have descended into some alternate universe without realizing it, will someone please pinch me? My doctor's appointment today was encouraging, on the one hand, and a bit intimidating at the same time! I received my "itinerary" at 2:30 this afternoon: yes, at Mayo, medical testing has been streamlined to the point that you feel as though you are checking in to board a flight. First up: a sweat test. According to Mayo's website, this will involve wearing "a disposable bathing suit and an orange powder is applied to the skin. The patient is then placed in a hot room to induce sweating, or until the core temperature reaches 100.8 degrees. The orange powder will turn purple where the patient sweats. In this way, physicians can determine if the patient has abnormal sweating patterns. A small battery operated current may be used to stimulate the sweat glands directly during the resting sweat output test."

Okay, I'm a Vikings fan, I can handle sweating purple for a few hours. I'm a little disgruntled that they scheduled this test first, leaving me purple for the rest of my day of testing! Apparently the purple color stays with you for about a day, and stains your clothes, too. For some reason, they warned me not to wear pantyhose to the test. Upon hearing this, I gave the nurse a sardonic look and asked her if she really felt it necessary to give me - the blue jeans and black t-shirt clad woman before her - this bit of information. She laughed and said, "Honey, you never can tell...even with the males!" Hilarious!

After the joys of the sweat test, I will have some routine tests: EKG, echocardiogram, and an MRI to investigate an old cyst I have in my brain. Should be interesting, but not too disturbing. Disturbing comes on Day #3: autonomic testing. This involves having sweat collection cells suctioned onto my arms and legs. I really want to know who is paid to remove and collect my sweat! I'm a nurse, and I've done some nasty things, but that is about the nastiest job I can think of! Then a small electric current is sent through my arms and legs to simulate peripheral nerve stress. If I don't faint after that, they will have me do a series of exercises and regular breathing routines, measuring my bloodwork, cardiac function, and sweat levels to check for undue nervous system response. If all else fails, they'll tilt me on that lovely tilt table again - to nearly standing, while receiving the current, collecting the sweat, doing bloodwork, measuring my vital signs and doing a carotid doppler to check blood flow to my brain. I am getting overstimulated just thinking about it!

Prayer requests for tomorrow & Friday:

1. A sense of humor to help me cope with all this rather invasive and insulting round of testing
2. Answers for the docs
3. Fainting during the autonomic test so they can tell what's going on
4. Cancer: my voice is changing again, which has me on edge. Please pray that I might be able to get in for a throat ultrasound to rule out new cancer growth while I am down here.

I will try to post some photos of the very purple me tomorrow - if not there are some prettier pictures waiting to post automatically! Thank you for the prayers.