This week is scanning week. PET-CT scan, MRI, and radiotherapy planning. I think I am going to need a season ticket for the hospital car park. The first two are to try to understand more about the lesion on my liver, found on my August scan. I expect I will find out a lot more things about my body that I didn’t need to know - as well as the suspected cancerous lesion, I already know I have a tumour on my adrenal gland (assumed benign), a cyst on my ovary, and an enlarged thyroid and goitre. I would imagine if you look inside the body of anyone in their mid 60s you will find something. Anyway, the main area of interest is the liver, and the PET-CT scan should get us closer to knowing whether it’s live cancer, or not.
The pre-arrival instructions included fasting for 6 hours, drinking loads of water, and resting as much as possible for 12 hours. With a late afternoon appointment I arrived rather hungry and rather bored. PET-CT scans at my hospital trust are provided by a private company who operate within the hospital facilities. So it was back to the Department of Nuclear Medicine that I originally visited for an injection of radioactive tracer prior to my sentinel lymph node biopsy. The process was very efficient. I was taken to a cubicle, answered some questions, and was cannulated so the injection could go into my vein. (no-one outside the oncology department and acute oncology ward seem to have the training and equipment to access my port). The nurse went off to get the radioactive material and I truly expected her to return in a hazmat suit. But ordinary nurse’s outfit was the order of the day. The radioactive syringe arrived in a lead box and it looked like it was made of lead too. It was attached to one outlet from the cannula, with saline in the other, so they went in together. I then had to sit for 60 minutes so it would flush round my body.
Then it was time to get into a gown and go in the scanner. It didn’t look very different from a normal CT scanner, essentially a white donut. It wasn’t claustrophobic. It was quite awkward to lie absolutely still with your arms above your head for 30 minutes. Once the process started, the machine pulled the bed through so that it started working at my head. It moved on a little every 3 minutes or so until it had got to my feet. It wasn’t particularly noisy, and the staff had a radio playing into the room. So nothing to fear about the process - but I am somewhat anxious about the results.
Next up - radiotherapy planning.
