After Tuesday's mess-up, I'm pleased to say I got a very rapid replacement PET scan appointment for today, at Plymouth. It was a rather longer journey - about two hours by train and taxi - to the Peninsula Radiology Academy near Derriford Hospital; the mobile unit parks at the back.
I'm sure many readers will know the setup. But for those who don't, a PET scan works by the fact that cancer cells use glucose faster than ordinary cells. So they inject you with mildly radioactive glucose, and then scan for 'hot spots' where that glucose has been especially taken up.
I admit I was a bit rattled when I was taken to the unit, mainly because of some misery in the Radiology Academy waiting room, another scan-ee just leaving, who insisted on telling me a) how difficult it had been getting there; b) how much the injection prep had hurt; and c) how terrifyingly narrow the scanner was (I said I'd had a CT scan already, but he had to hammer it home - "Oooh, this one's much, much narrower"). But for us the journey had all very straightforward, as was the procedure after they'd done all the paperwork and checked I'd followed the instructions for resting up the day before, and the six-hour fast. Nothing horrific happened.
Still, you do realise that they're dealing with some heavy stuff when they take the dose out of a canister that they only look at through a lead-glass shield, and bring the injection to you in kind of white ammunition box that sets off an alarm when they open the door. After the injection you sit for an hour reading or listening to MP3s (no talking to other patients, because your larynx muscles use glucose too), get taken the toilet (so that your radioactive bladder contents won't dominate the scan), then are called into the scanner room.
The scan is done with you lying on your back, braced by pillows and a knee rest, with your arms above your head; and you have to stay very still like that for twenty minutes. My chief fear was of being tortured by an itchy nose for all those twenty minutes in the scanner, and I'd kept getting itches while waiting. But it was fine: the concentration seemed to drive all that away. I didn't find it claustrophobic, even though I'm mildly prone to that. It's like being taken through the hole in a rather fat doughnut. They run you to and fro quite quickly a couple of times - I guess to get the general lay of the land - then you go though more slowly, head-first, in steps, for the scan proper. And that's it, apart from afterward falling like a starving wolverine on whatever food you've brought to break your fast.
The weather was bright and quite mild, so afterward Irene and I took the bus down into Plymouth, and pottered around there for the rest of the afternoon, down the main plaza to the Wheel of Plymouth and the Hoe, with its view of the Lido (pictured), along the coast road to the Barbican, and then back up to the station. I recommend it. I'm learning fast that it makes these appointments a lot more tolerable if we do at least something pleasant afterward - even something as little as sitting in a park, or going to a cafe for a cup of tea. If the cancer has put us to the trouble and expense of going on a journey, I feel it's less in control of our lives if we make a point of adapting that journey for our own enjoyment.
So now, it's the wait for the scan results, which should give the full picture of what exactly is dumping its garbage in my lymph nodes.
- James
