PET Shop

     My oncologist got me scheduled for a PET scan a lot sooner than I thought she would--this morning, in fact!  I'm hoping what this means is we'll have results sooner and not have to wait in suspense for some big Results Reveal at the next chemo/oncology date on the 28th.  Cross fingers for that!
     Ever had a PET scan?  If you have, then you will be able to correct all the parts where I botch the description.
     A PET (positron emission tomography) scan is one of the many things that just renews my extreme geek fandom of the biological sciences and the use of technology with it.
     In a nutshell:  Cancer cells grow faster than the other cells in your body.  Because they grow fastest, they consume more energy than your other cells do.  When you have a PET scan, you fast at least 4 hours prior.  Then you are injected with a combination of sugar and radioactive isotope.  And you sit still for an hour.  This lets your cancer cells go crazy and fiendishly gobble up all that sugar...and radioactive tracers.  Then you are scanned for your radioactive "hotspots" to indicate active cancer.  Kind of a neat trick, huh?
     A few observations:  It is really really cold in the room where you wait all by your lonesome and do nothing.  And by do nothing I mean nothing.  No reading.  No listening to music.  Don't even hum. Nada. Zip. Zilch.  Just wait for an hour while you become radioactive.  So I bundle up in preparation.  You need just the right shirt(s) because you want to have long sleeves but also have the ability to push them up for the doctor to access your veins...if you have to take off something to be injected, you are going to be chilly.  Very chilly.
     I thought they might use my port today, but they just used a vein.  I was a wee bit relieved because the last time I had my blood drawn through the port at the hospital, the nurse just killed me!  Oh my gosh!  And she KNEW she was going to hurt me because she told me to take a deep breath and blow it--like I'm having a contraction or something! I almost came out of the chair and smacked her silly, it hurt so bad!  So I'm a little gun shy right now...the chemo nurse didn't hurt me, but I think I need a few more good encounters to erase the bad one!
     The view in the PET shop...uninspiring, to say the least.  When I had my first PET the decor in the little room was typical Medical Office Bland.  There were some weirdly abstract pastel textured collage-y things framed on the wall.  But in this little room, there was nothing.  I take it back--there was a hook on the wall.  On the blank wall.  All walls blank save for two light switches and an intercom.  Maybe they don't even want your brain to be stimulated because they don't want a diversion of the radioactive isotope--they want it to go straight to cancer, no detours.  So I just chilled in a recliner chair under blankets and they switched off the light and I just waited an hour for my radioactive superpowers to reach full strength:
     After the hour's wait I went into the scan room--they have you lay on a metal "tray" with your arms over your head like a diver and they slide you into an open metal doughnut for a bit...I've had MRIs in the enclosed tube, and this is not like that.  The closed tube can be very claustrophobic--but the open concept is no sweat.  During my first PET there was a recorded voice that told me, "Breathe.  Breathe. Hold...(okay, seriously, still? Oh my gosh are you kidding I'm going to pass out)...Release."  Over and over.  No voices this time. Maybe because they aren't trying to find a cancer they don't know about? Maybe the tiny movements of my breathing aren't as critical?  Newer machine?  I dunno.  But it was so quiet and I was so tired I think I dozed off a bit during it.  Here's a picture of a PET scanner--I didn't take this one.  I don't think they'd appreciate my going all paparazzi in their lab:

I read that the scanner makers are having to supersize the doughnut for the supersizing of patients--so glad I fit in the standard PET doughnut!  Whew!

     
     I have films of my initial CT scan, but I don't have it in digital form to share with you. But at the Google medical library I found a comparison of a CT image against a PET image for a cancerous mediastinal lymph node.  Close enough.  Here it is--thank you to whomever this image belongs to.  I hope you are long in remission.

Remember, this is NOT me...but I can show you mine (if you show me yours--nudge nudge wink wink) if you want when you come visit.  

     So to imagine that this was/is an image of me, you have to first orient yourself to what you are looking at.  Imagine I'm laying on my back on a table and you are sitting on a stool facing the top of my head. Maybe you are going to give me a facial?  A massage?  Anyway, instead of being all nice like that, you slice off my head and shoulders and carefully move them aside so that you can look into my torso.  See the vertebrae on the bottom?  See the sternum on the top? So you are looking into the top of my lungs and that whole cavity. Imagine my grapefruit tumor growing from a mediastinal lymph node on the left side of my trachea, taking up a whole bunch of space on the left--hopefully we find out it's hogging up a whole lot less space now.  But see how the CT will show you the Shadows of Cancer Things to Come, and the PET will "light up" the malignancy?  What I am hoping is that there is no big giant ball of light to see.  I'd like not even a wee bit of a nightlight, but I don't want to overreach here.  It's only been 3 chemo rounds after all.  But what I don't want is some big ass grapefruit-sized beacon of light to shine through on this PET scan.
   I don't know how soon we'll get a summary of findings, but I will of course let you know once I know.  The good news is that a fast-growing tumor like mine also responds very quickly to chemo; I'm hoping that mine is typical in that sense.  I do not like to be the "interesting" patient--I've been that many times before and it is always a pain in the butt.  I always aspire to be the straight-up vanilla, no-surprises patient, never more than now.
     As far as chemo recovery pacing, I'm on the bone-ache portion of the tour now.  It's not my favorite, but it really isn't too awful.  I may moan and groan like it is horrible, but it's not. It is mostly in my femurs/hips, just this relentless dull aching.  It makes it hard to rest.  So I feel very tired but I can't get comfortable to nap as much as I think my body needs to.  And I feel restless because staying in any one position doesn't feel comfortable. So I randomly roam a bit.  What does work sometimes is when I make a kind of nest in bed...all bundled up, hugging a big pillow, pillow between my knees...and I listen to Chemo Jams on my headphones.  Listening to the music distracts me from the aches, and I can doze off a little bit, my brain slightly tuned into the music and slightly letting go to sleep a bit.  So that's a strategy for others, maybe.  It beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick is all I'm saying.  
     Day 7-14 is that really low immunity time, so I get to be the Masked Avenger when I go out and about.  My Bald and Badass shirt should be arriving anytime, though, so I can suit up in that superhero outfit on occasion and shame the gawkers, I suppose. But really, I'm kind of beyond being bothered by it.  It's that beautiful "don't sweat the small stuff" clarity that I thought I had a pretty good handle on B.C. but am truly embracing nowadays. I hate to be such a Cancer Cliche, but I've gotta say don't get yourself worked up about things that are outside of your control.  Not worth your emotional energy.  Just deal with what is ahead of you, affect positive change where you can, do your best, but cut yourself some slack not to be perfect.  Every moment is a new opportunity for a clean slate.  
     Okay, enough of my cancer-inspired philosophy--not what this is supposed to be.  But thanks for the indulgence anyway.