GLOWING, GLOWING, GONE!

--originally posted 12/17/09--

I am done being radioactive so I am back at work and able to write to all of you...

HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW
Yesterday I had my PET scan, which was interesting to say the least. Radioactive isotopes suspended in glucose was the least interesting part...my tech was completely hairless (I will assume as much anyway). When I asked him why (yes, I am the person who would ask someone such a question) I thought the answer was going to be something related to chemotherapy. But no.

Did you know, when a person goes into shock, as in the case of this tech, David, who nine years ago was robbed at gunpoint, the human body can react so as to lose its own hair?! Apparently, this is true. Nine years ago, David was the victim of an armed robbery and was so frightened by the event that he started losing his hair shortly after and eventually lost all of it. I asked if he could be shocked back into growing hair and he said he didn't think so.

SCAN, SIR?
So, I proceeded to have the scan done which was uneventful. Quite boring actually - I was dozing in the machine after a while. When it was all done, I asked to see the scan and David let me.

Now, I am no doctor, no oncologist, not a reader of PET scans by trade. But what I saw, or think I saw, was encouraging. It looked like the "hotspots" (the areas that the radioactive sugar went to) were just these: my brain, my heart, my bladder, and three spots in my left shoulder. The brain and heart are "glucose avid" - they needed that sugar for energy so they absorbed it. My bladder was at work processing the glucose, so it showed up there. The cancer in the affected lymph nodes in my shoulder snatched up that glucose, too - this is the point of the whole PET scan. By my non-expert opinion, and again, I don't have the skills to accurately read a PET scan, it looked like the only area that is affected is my left shoulder.

I could have official results this Friday; definitely by next Wednesday.

PRAYER PRIORITIES
My hopes for this whole thing are shifting more and more away from me and the results for me and more and more toward God and his plan for the people he has put in my life at this point in time. So, I pray for my family, friends, coworkers, doctors and oncologists, for David and the nurses and admins to see me and my family and friends and wonder how I can be so calm having cancer and all. Pray that my reactions would stir questions in their hearts.

Thanks for reading and for your prayers and thoughts. The next edition of The Nodular News will feature updates on the PET scan results.

Trina