Written some time ago, on the occasion of my last PET scan, but not published until now as work keeps getting in the way of blogging.
Sitting in SCGH nuclear medicine again, waiting for the results of my last PET scan. The sandwiches look the same. They may indeed be the same sandwiches. It’s hard to tell.
PET scanning is quite boring for the patient. After a cannula in my arm I got to lay down on a reclining chair in a lead-lined alcove. You can’t tell it’s lead-lined except for the discreet sign on the wall telling you so. SCGH being built years ago it probably really does have lead in the walls, rather than in the water as is the current fashion.
A lead box on wheels sits outside the alcove. It is in fact a very stupid robot with the dangerous task of injecting the radioactive tracer into my arm via a cannula fed through the shielded wall.
I then get to lie quietly for an hour in the darkened alcove while my cells take up the labelled glucose to use for fuel. Being basically glucose it the cells gobble it up fine, but leave the radioactive fluorine behind in the cell, a bit like the wrappers from a Happy Meal.
Then on to more dynamic lying very still, this time in the scanner. After a quick pass through for the CT part, the PET part is very slow, advancing by 10 cm steps every 5 minutes or so. To avoid cooking me and everyone else in range they only give a modest dose of Fluorine, which means waiting to detect enough counts. You can’t rush the physics.
Thus we progressed along my whole body from toes to top of head, by intermittent 10 cm steps. Very high tech, very stately. Very time consuming.
It turns out they are so busy that no one has time to read my scan. The Nuclear Medicine Physician makes some quick notes about my condition and sends me on my way, merrily irradiating all and sundry around me. Off to RPH to try to max out my colleagues personal radiation monitors.
…
Since writing that I can confirm that the scan was clear of lymphoma. There are some lesions in my lungs, a consequence of the drugs I took to kill the lymphoma. They’re not serious and shouldn’t cause me any problems.
The hot spot in my right calf is still there, although much reduced. I had a big lymphoma node there, and some of the activity is probably scarring from that. I still have some symptoms from an injury in my calf before I was diagnosed, so some activity may be from that.
But it’s not lymphoma.
yadbor 