Wednesday, April 20, 2011

PET Scan - Hoping to be a cool cat, not a hot dog

This morning at 7:45 I casually arrived at the Forsyth Radiology Center, dressed appropriately in clothing without zippers, snaps, or other metal fasteners. As if it were an ordinary day, I smiled at the nurses and technicians, chatted amiably, presented my left arm for IV insertion, received the dose of radioactive glucose, and grabbed up a couple of magazines to peruse while the stuff pumped through my vessels to reach all the important parts...my brain, my bones, my liver, my lungs. I spent a very pleasant hour, lounging in a recliner under a warm blanket, waiting for the stuff to do its duty.

As I understand it, the radioactive glucose travels around the body, and since cancer cells LOVE sugar, they will gobble it up greedily and show up on the scanner as a "hot" spot. I am hoping, of course, to find that there are no such spots anywhere in my body.

The time in the scanner is short...maybe 20 or 30 minutes, and since I was covered with another warm blanket, I think I slept a bit. Unlike an MRI machine, this scanner is quiet, and except for an occasional shift in or out of the open ended tube, I couldn't tell there was anything happening. The staff is so professional, yet nonchalant, that one could forget that this two hours on a Wednesday morning was an "edge of the cliff" kind of experience for me. Most of the time, I wasn't thinking of the outcome; but when I came out of the machine, the thought washed over me that the answer was waiting on the monitors in the next room. But I am going to have to wait a whole week before finding out whether I am a "cool cat" or a "hot dog."

Stay tuned.

1 comment:

  1. Well, Annie, I feel like an idiot. I've been checking your blog and waiting for you to write something since last December. Getting worried....Today, four months later, I noticed that the page was opening to 2010. Sooo embarrassed, I clicked on the current year, and voila!--found that you'd been writing all along. (Believe it or not, I've followed other blogs.) That should make you laugh, in spite of having to wait for your cool cat results.
    By the way, you must know you're a fabulous writer....

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