August 15, 2024
David has a PET scan at 7:45 on Friday morning at Piedmont West in Atlanta, David wanted to stay in Atlanta tonight so we wouldn’t have to be up so early and get caught in Atlanta traffic on the way. This afternoon, Dr. B’s office called and said there was a cancellation and David could come on Monday and see Dr. B if he wanted to change his appointment. David was glad to do this since the next appointment wasn’t until the end of August. We are both glad to be able to speak with him following the PET results.
We left for Atlanta after I finished work today to spend the night a few exits up from the imaging location. We usually stay at the little Holiday Inn across from The Battery at Truist Park, so we lucked up and were able to grab a room there easily since the Braves are on the road today. It is also the same one I used to go back and forth to shower and change clothes in February when he had liver surgery. It is a clean little hotel and the staff are very friendly. It gets sort of crowded with late home games and construction crews that stay during the week, but it feels like a relatively safe area. I had built up some points from the February stay, so we got to use those for the night. For a regular PET scan, your blood glucose cannot be over 200 before the scan (Piedmont tells you 160). This is because a small amount of radioactive glucose is injected into a vein so it will naturally increase your blood sugar. The PET scanner rotates around and makes a picture of where glucose is being used in the body. Malignant tumor cells show up brighter in the picture because they are more active and take up more glucose than normal cells do. Cancer cells love sugar! Anywho, David is diabetic so this increases his already overdriven scanxiety because if your sugar happens to be over 200 (they told him 160 but I told him everything I read says 200 but he said they told him 160 so that is the magic number…) then he will have to reschedule the test. We stopped at Cracker Barrel on the way and he ate grilled fish and green veggies and no other carbs in hopes of keeping his sugar lower. We ate in near silence which is unusual for us, and I knew he was feeling bad and also very nervous, but it was uncomfortable and all I could do was sit there and think “why us” and “it wasn’t supposed to be this way” and my favorite mantra that does absolutely nothing “it isn’t fair”. It is hard to explain to someone who may not have experienced this but while you may expect bad news, you just don’t welcome the feelings that will come with hearing it. The pit in your stomach, then the sensation of your stomach falling away from you as if being on a steep roller coaster that just started the rapid decent, and then the rising feeling in your chest that you will be sick but the sick never comes. The sensation just stays in your chest or your throat and attempts to choke you until the next phase of stinging in your eyes that you know once started, will not be controlled.
Anywho, we started binge watching Yellowstone recently and we have just fell in love with the scenery and characters and he spotted a Yellowstone coffee mug and had to have it. He collects coffee mugs and has so many they have spilled over (ha! pun) into other rooms of the house. I know we are behind, and I tried so many times to get him to start the series with me but he wasn’t into it. I asked him to watch the first episode with me and if he didn’t like it, I would just watch it alone. He was hooked about 15 minutes in although he would argue it was more like 16 minutes. We are basically like any Yellowstone meme you have ever seen, Season 1 you are a casual observer like ok, ok, I see you there horse rider people. Season 2 you are drinking coffee and it is pretty much channeling Rip like “let’s go to work”. Seasons 3-5 you are wearing western wear, a cowboy hat, have a rifle within an arm’s grasp and thinking about moving to Montana with your cows and horses while you walk around thinking you can solve all of your problems by being like Beth.
We made it to the hotel and unlike previous times, we made it to the room with our couple of bags and I didn’t have to make sixty-seven trips back to the car. Later, we talked about realities and that we knew the last CEA marker was elevated and he had not had any other treatment since the three ablations so it would not be surprising to have more uptake (more cancer). The fear we have is the increasing abdominal and rectal pain he is having. Is it growing again? Is it active? How much worse will it be? You think all of these things while trying to remain positive and hope, pray, plead, and whatever else you can do to reassure yourself that there is still a possibility it could not be worse, and we will handle it whatever it is. I cannot accurately describe the constant thought processes we go through daily and the extreme stress we are continually under. It clouds our minds. We cannot think clearly and everything is foggy and worrisome. So, while we hope with every ounce of our being, in the back of our mind, we know what is also probable and don’t want to acknowledge it because once we do, we feel like we are giving in and then it will take us. There wasn’t much on the satellite channels, so we ended up watching a couple of Gunsmoke episodes and fell asleep to Marshal Dillion and Miss Kitty and the sounds of people opening and closing doors down the hall.