Friday, April 13, 2007

Update: 13th April

PET scan next week
Just got a call to say that my PET scan will be on Monday morning 9 am. I fast for five hours beforehand (so that I'm ready to go really slow for a few hours...). This scan is to determine whether the residual mass revealed in my most recent CT scan is still active or is merely scar tissue. I get an injection of radioactive glucose (sugar) and sit very still for an hour. Sugar is picked up by cells that have been active (which is why I sit very still - so that as little as possible goes into other muscles), particularly the brain and active tumour cells. I then lie inside a large tube that functions as a 3D Geiger counter, measuring where radiation is coming from (i.e. which cells have been picking up the glucose). I probably won't get the results for at least a couple of days. I'll post an update here as soon as I know.

Speech therapy
In other news, yesterday I went to my first session of speech therapy proper and have been given a variety of amusing sounds to practice. I would have been really good at being a speech therapist before I lost my voice - I used to love practising silly noises.

2 comments:

Anthony Douglas said...

I was thinking that the month must be nearly up just this morning...

So, if I read you correctly, they want to prepare you for not moving for hours on end by eating nothing but sugar in advance? And radioactive sugar at that?! It's a funny old world...

Maybe you can amuse yourself by mentally practising silly noises! (off to pray now)

byron smith said...

Actually, eating nothing in advance - the radioactive sugar comes as an injection (if they can find any veins left - this has been a problem since chemotherapy...).

And I can make the noises just fine in my head, but then, somehow, they don't come out how they are meant to.