A bit of Happy for the afternoon

A sample PET/CT scanner, SO different from an MRI??

PET/CT Scan Day
(good news- and you know me, I will tell the story - so skip down if you just want the info)

First, I survived the test itself.

I know I am sounding a bit silly, but when this change in diagnosis arrived on Friday, a certain amount of my anxiety got focused into the PET/CT scan. I had a really hard time with the MRI, and this didn't seem much different. Trust me, the noise wasn't the issue. Claustrophobia when my shoulders got jostled going into the MRI machine was.

I went back and forth on it, finally realizing that I needed to be gentle to myself.  I have plenty of good skills and have been using them.  However, it would be ok to have some help managing my anxiety as I had to get another IV, with radioactive tracer, then wait an hour or more alone and quiet, before even starting the scan.  It has been really a challenge to stay quiet in my mind for the last few days, this news of locally metastatic cancer so blew me away.  And then we add the scan itself, 30 minutes in a doughnut shaped machine (very very plump doughnut, with too small a hole IMHO) being very still, while looking for more cancer, the kind that western medicine doesn't really know how to cure too well, there goes my anxiety.

So, uncle!  I took a whopping 5mg of Valium.  It helped, just enough to take the edge off during the scan.  I was able to simply decide to trust that I was ok, and could keep my eyes closed the whole time and not look at it.  It also allowed me to make some really bad jokes with Laura on the way home.  Our dear friend Kat suggested that I ought to have shared if I was going to do such things as to have a peculiar sense of humor on Valium.

Now for the really good news.  It was just two hours later when Monica called from Dr. Drogula's office.  The scan was all clear - no sign of distant metastasis.

I am gently celebrating this and resting a bit better now.  That was a very scary prospect.  Now, this news does not take any of the treatment regimen out of my future, yet it truly eases my mind.

blessed be!

~Amelia