September 22, 2023
Pet Scan
After work on Thursday, we went up to Atlanta to stay close to the imaging center so we wouldn’t have the stress of getting up so early and then fighting ATL traffic. On Friday, we arrived at the Piedmont Atlanta Imaging Center at 7:45. They called him back around 8:05 and told me I could come and wait in the waiting room where he would be. He was taken into a little room, given radioactive sugar and they came to take him to the scan at 9:05
The news we received this afternoon shook us to our core. The PET Scan revealed a spot on David’s liver. The two oncologiss consulted quickly and agreed to terminate the plan to begin radiation. They do not want to wait on a biopsy and will proceed with the knowledge the cancer has spread to David’s liver. The liver now takes precedence and David was scheduled to receive a chemo port on September 28, 2023 and will begin 4 courses of chemotherapy following the port procedure recovery.
PETS BUT NOT THAT KIND (-d)
The good news about a PET scan is that it’s (in my non-professional opinion) a good way to find cancer in your body. The bad news about a PET scan is that it’s (in my personal emotional opinion) a good way to find cancer in your body. I can honestly say i was at 50/50 on this one by the day of the scan. If anything else was there I wanted to know it and everything about it. However, also I couldn’t honestly imagine finding out that there was more or anything else about where it could be or anything. It is a very odd place to be almost perfectly balanced and tipping either way for quite a few days and hours on and off as the date and time grow closer. In the end, I decided not to give myself the option that there was anything to do but go through with it and accept then deal with whatever results came. If I was honest with myself, at least 50.01% of me wanted to know if there was anything else anywhere else in me and then aggressively go get that the same way I was approaching the cancer I already knew was there.
After the usual getting “gowned-up” for a scan and having my blood sugar checked to be sure it was low enough for an effective scan they brought in the coolest looking metal radioactive labeled box ever. 🙂 Honestly, it was the most impressed I’ve been so far. Just enough age and sturdiness in it to seem as serious as it is and marked with just enough warnings to let you know the same but not over the top. Inside is radioactive sugar designed to be taken up by any cancer cells (especially significant) in my body then help show those cells/areas on the PET scan. Interestingly enough I had no problem with this going into my body. This also begins my disappointment throughout this process that no matter what kind of chemicals I receive, no part of me glows in the dark. Afterwards I get an hour to wait “peacefully” in what I’ll call a too quiet room with a lamp that’s attached to the table (probably for good reason), and just enough low lighting inside the room to let me try to look through the grids in the ceiling at the slightly more well lit areas above. Right before I’m almost close to comfortable that’s the end of my hour wait and it’s into The Machine.
Turns out the PET machine is really just another version of the CT and it happens to be in the most awesome room yet. We’re talking corner window views (not great laying down but still impressive), murals on the ceiling of plants and sunlight and positive things. Clean and bright and full of just plain good energy (ha). As is always the case, I’m guided on how and where to lay and given plenty of things to brace against and make me comfortable. Several passes up and down and in and out later I’m done. I remember it took a little bit longer than I would have liked but was in no way uncomfortable. Nothing like the the freedom of being out of the gowns and into my regular clothes and out the door.
THEN IT ALL CHANGED
There was a spot that showed up on my liver and because of this everything that was planned before was stopped and something entirely different started. Immediately. No ifs, no whats, no buts, nothing but a new direction. Right. Now.
It certainly wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but it’s what I heard. It’s what I responded to, and as best as I can remember, I was on board with it just as quickly as I had been with the previous plan. It was important for me to be doing something, and if this was the new “doing something” course that had been chosen, it’s the one that we’d be doing.
