Busy Week and PET Day

Matt was up this week so I was spending lots of time with him and not on the computer. Sorry for the lack of entries.

Yesterday was PET day. How I wish it meant I was getting a new dog. No it just meant that I would spend hours at RWJUH having a Positron emission tomography test.

I arrived at 8:30 am to register then went downstairs to the radiology department. By 9 am I was with Margaret - a nurse with a special touch. She can find a vein and start an IV with ease. They don't use my port because the radiotracer is sticky and might just hang up in the port. We chatted a bit about her hometown of Athens, Georgia as she checked my blood sugar. I visited Georgia last month so it was nice to tell her about the places I had visited.

Then, on went the I-pod and blanket and in came the technician. He injected the radiotracer( Fluorodeoxyglucose) and I laid still listening to music for an hour. I was told to drink a bottle of water before I arrived and then all that IV fluid meant a full bladder so a trip to the rest room was in order. Then I had the scan done. The entire scan took about 45 minutes. Laying still was ok but having my arms over my head became a bit uncomfortable. Just when my arms started to go numb the tech lowered the table and slid me out of the machine. He asked me to go have something to eat and be back in 45 minutes.

So from G1 I went to the 2nd floor for some lunch. I must admit the food is pretty good there. Plus they now have Dunkin Donuts Coffee.

At 11:30 I went back downstairs for the last group of scans. Since I have Ovarian Cancer they do a second set of scans of the pelvic region after the radiotracer has a chance to decay and not light up my bladder so nothing behind it can be seen. Thirty minutes later I was done and ready to go home.

On the way out I ran into Jay, who is a nurse in special procedures. It is always nice to see a familiar face.

Since I had been flat on my back for most of the past 3 hours I figured I needed to walk home. So that is what I did. Slower than when I walked home last year before my surgery and chemo but it still felt good.

I ran across this article about PET and OC from last month" Society of Nuclear Medicine Meeting and thought I would share it-

SNM 2009: FDG-PET/CT May Be Superior to CA-125 in Detecting Ovarian Cancer Recurrence

LiveStrong
Dee
Every Day is a Blessing ! Today my blessing was eating lunch outside in Princeton with my friend Flo.