PET/CT take two…
I had to show up at China Basin today and have another PET/CT scan. I had one in August, to see if the other stuff they saw on my liver and other breast on the MRI was cancer or not. I don’t mind MRIs, but I don’t like the PET/CT. For this one, they start an IV and inject you with glucose that has a radioactive isotope.
They tell you to hang out for about half an hour in the waiting room, and no talking—the flapping of your jaw makes the jaw muscles take up the glucose, and it lights up the resulting image. The idea behind this is that cancer takes up the glucose faster than your body can use it, so the areas that are cancerous tumors light up like Las Vegas.
After the first pass, they inject some type of hyper-osmotic crap into the IV and you start to feel it burn as if you’ve downed a few shots of ouzo, or grappa. You start to feel the burn in the back of the throat, then the sternum, down the descending aorta, abdomen, bladder, and then the crotch—it feels HOT, and I was worried it would trigger a hot flash. The burn in the sternum and back of the throat last a long while, long after the feet and hands have stopped burning. I hate this stuff—then when you’re done they tell you that you can’t drink any caffeine, and no alcohol because you’re supposed to drink lots of fluids to excrete out whatever they’ve injected you with, because it could cause kidney damage Sheesh…what the hell have they been putting into me all year?
So, I sat in the waiting room with George, and looked at magazines, nodded occasionally at his yes/no questions, because I couldn’t talk, and drank lots of water (which I’m also supposed to do.) They called me in and put me in the machine, and I laid perfectly still for half an hour. I tried not to think about the appointment I have next week with the oncologist I don’t like. I tried not to imagine that she’s going to tell me that whatever was on my liver is worse/the same and that she wants to get a biopsy.
A percutaneous liver biopsy killed my brother.
I won’t do it.
That’s him when he graduated from the police academy. He was fresh out of the military so he said it was a bit of a joke. I remember how fit and strong he was (at least, he sure could beat me at everything, being 11 years older than me. It never occurred to me that I couldn’t take him in a fight…until I was clearly on the losing end of the fight, heh.)
Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him. He died a month after his 30th birthday—tomorrow would have been his birthday. I try to remember him like this, young and healthy, rather than that whole year he faught leukemia.
After the scan George and I went to breakfast, because I had to be fasting for this test, and George decided to fast with me, I guess, so we were pretty well ravenous. After breakfast, we came home and chilled, because (as if my day hadn’t been sucky enough) I had to go to radiation that afternoon.
I worried that the radioactive isotope would be bad during radiation, and didn’t know the half life of it…I called Dr. F and left her a message, but when I got there, I wasn’t surprised that she said it was no problem. Nothing is a problem for her. It’s me that has the problem with everything.
Today was treatment 11.
19 to go.
