Another Donut Ride

The machine

This thing lives in a huge semi-trailer so it can move around the area as needed. It has two rooms, one housing the machine (big) and another where they prepare you for the ride (small). After a sleepless night, I was pretty tired when we got there around 1:30 in the afternoon. The place was packed with folks getting treatments of one kind or another. This is not a good sign! I would rather the place be a ghost town, meaning we are beating this beast!

Every time I do one of these tests, I get, well, "concerned", so I did not sleep well last night. I trust my doctors, but the tests are definitive about what is going on, and force you to think about everything. Definitely not fun! In between tests, your mind can basically ignore everything. I suspect this is a form of denial, but it means I do not spend time worrying about things.

Prep work

It was only a few minutes until they called my name, and walked me out the side door to the trailer. Patients are not allowed to climb stairs up to the level of the machine, we have to ride an elevator. Really? I can do that! NO YOU CANNOT! Fine! We rode the silly thing up three feet! It took forever. I suspect a small squirrel cage was powering the thing!

They put me in the little room with a huge chunk of metal that shields the radioactive stuff you get injected into you for the test. For my kind of cancer, they use a barium sugar mixture which homes in on any cancer cells in your body and lights up the image they take with the machine. I had to fast for a day before the test. No sugar for sure, and mostly just small amounts of protein and water. I told folks I was on a Bread and Water diet, minus the bread part! I had to drink a lot of water before the test, and they still made me drink another bottle before the ride - yikes!

Injecting the stuff was a non-event. I did not glow in the dark, which would have been pretty cool. I am actually getting used to people sticking sharp chunks of metal in me in various places. I will tell you what, though! When I redesign the human body it is going to have a lot of zippers, and sockets for tubing and other stuff. It would sure be easier than all this poking, prodding, and occasional cutting they have to do not!

Sleepy-time

You have to wait for 45 minutes while the magic goo finds its way throughout your body. I was sleepy enough that I dozed off during the wait. During my nap, those little sugar things were hunting down any of those cancer cells (actually, it is the other way around. The cancer cells will suck up any sugar that floats by!) Then they take you into the big room, lay you down on the machine, and strap you down for the ride.

The ride

The ride is another big boring adventure. You just move back and forth through the donut-hole while these weird "positrons" zing through your body. The actual beam seems to come from a rotating ring that spins around you as you move through it. The image the machine produces is a full 3-D thing doctors can cut and slice as they wish to explore every tiny part of your body! I have looked at some of those images, but it would be interesting to explore them they way a doctor does. In the end, they will report the findings.

Wrap-up

Once the ride was over (about 2 hours for the entire thing), they unwrapped me, made me ride the silly elevator again, and shoved me back into the waiting room, where Cheryl was having her own adventure!

Waiting

Apparently the crowd in the waiting room was pretty wild. Some were quiet, some were loud, most seemed to want to make sure Cheryl knew everything about their problem, their treatment, and their family history. Cheryl was pretty wiped out by it all, and more than ready to ditch this place and go home! So we wandered out the front door toward the car.

The funniest thing we saw during the whole (hole?) ordeal was a pair of bumper stickers on a tiny Honda in the parking lot. It said "F*** Cancer" on one side, and "I wish cancer would get cancer and DIE!" on the other side. Pretty well sums things up!

Finally

Now that the test was over, I could have food again. So we headed to our favorite diet place. We both had DQ Blizzards to celebrate! DQ must have donut flavored Blizzards on sale. The place was being overrun with police cars. They always hang out where the donuts are, right? The only problem I have now is waiting until my Oncologist reads the image. My appointment with him is a week away. I am not sure I want him to call before that, or not. I will worry regardless, until I hear the answer. God willing (and listening to all of your prayers) we will get good news!

Postscript

Today (the next day) I got a phone call from my Oncologist. Boy is hearing that call (and seeing the caller ID) nerve wracking! The nurse who was on the line told me that the PET scan looked "pretty good" and they would see me next week! PHEW! Looks like God was willing! Thank you God, and all my support folks!