17 November 2013
But It Was Perfectly Safe
17/11/13 05:25
A big week. Wednesday I had a PET scan. They wanted to check to see if there was any rogue cancer spots floating around. The bad news was that the nearest place that did PET scans was in Vancouver. We had to take the day off of work, line up for the ferry, and all that. The good news was that because I was going over for a medical reason BC Health Authority picked up the cost of the ferry ride. SCORE! The appointment was at 2:30 but we took an early ferry. We wanted to make sure we got there in time. After all we weren’t that familiar with Vancouver, and it was a workday so traffic might have been an issue. As it turned out we found the place with no problem and because we were so early we had time to kill. By the purest coincidence I just happened to have maps from the hospital to Ikea and the closest Apple Store.
I totally did not plan that.
Anyway after bopping round town for a couple of hours we checked in at the hospital. After a bit of a wait, we were early after all, they called me in. I was led into a room where they put me in a recliner and inserted the IV. On the phone they had told me that I would get a glucose solution with a tracer. I was hoping that it would be by mouth. I had not been allowed to eat anything after breakfast at 6:00 and I could only drink water. I was looking forward to some Kool-Ade or a peanut butter tracer chip cookie or something like that but no such luck. I just lay there in the recliner and tried not to think about food. They’d also told me that the test would take 20 minutes. In fact it did, but they hadn’t mentioned the ten minutes of prep time and another forty minutes for the glucose and tracer to be absorbed. Fortunately between CBC Radio 1 playing in the room and the warm blanket the time passed quickly. I even started to doze off.
I should mention something about the tracer. The PET scan combines 3D X-Ray imaging of the body with a tracer. The tracer emits gamma rays and the scanner maps where these rays are coming from. Atoms of the tracer are bonded into glucose, a sugar that cells use. The faster a cell is growing the more glucose it uses. Cancer cells grow and divide fast and so they take up lots of glucose and along with it the tracer. As a result cancer will show up as bright spots on the scan while regular things like muscles and organs that are just sitting there will be dark. They told me the tracer was perfectly safe. Nothing to worry about. Oh but I should avoid being near pregnant women, or small children, or people with compromised immune systems for a day or so because I would be radioactive, but it’s perfectly safe. Oh and they told specifically not to try to cross the US border as I would set off the US Border Services radiation detectors. They’d think I was trying to smuggle an atomic bomb into the country and would react accordingly.
But it was perfectly safe.
The test itself was simple enough. First she made me change my pants. The problem was my knife and my belt buckle, and my wallet full of Loonies and Toonies, and my keys, and my zipper and the jeans with rivets. Metal would obscure the scan and I was carrying more metal than the average medieval knight. I changed into the special pants they provided for the scan. I was surprised to find that they did not use green surgical scrubs. Rather she handed me a pair of elastic waistband Docker’s Khakis. Now Docker’s Khakis have never been my style but this seemed like a rather extreme way to remove all metal from the room, not to mention all the testosterone.
I kept thinking how lucky it was I hadn’t worn my underwire jockey shorts.
We went to the scanning room. Indirect lighting and beige colours had a calming effect. The centre of the room was filled with a large machine at least ten feet wide and high and five deep. A two foot wide tube with a motorized table ran through the centre and it was emitting a low whirring noise. I got up on the table. She put a warm blanket over me and a block under my knees and my head. She then told me that the table would move back and forth through the tube, to not move, and that it was perfectly safe. She then left, went into a nearby shielded bunker, where she could watch the proceedings through several layers of leaded glass and via closed circuit TV.
But it was perfectly safe.
The scan itself was actually quite simple. I lay there as the table moved back and forth through the tube. The light were dim, I had a warm blanket on me and the sound of the scanner reminded me of a server room. After a few minutes I even started to doze off.
YOU’RE DOING GREAT. ONLY NINE MINUTES TO GO!!!
I hadn’t noticed the small shrill, amazingly loud speaker four inches in front of my nose. When she gave me those words of encouragement, I nearly jumped out of my tube…um…socks. I’m glad they weren’t scanning for adrenaline levels, I would have been off the chart. I think my heart stopped for a bit there.
But it was perfectly safe.
PIX: Snow on the mountains on the mainland, but not here.
