Scan Results

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Last week I had my 7th PET-CT scan. To prepare for it you have to eat a low carb/low sugar diet the day before and you can’t have anything to eat or drink except water for 6 hours before the procedure. When you get to the office they check your blood sugar and inject you with a radioactive glucose tracer and make you wait an hour before they scan you so the tracer can circulate throughout your body.  That’s a lot of radiation that has already been injected into my body and there’s no end in sight.  I will continue to get them every 3 months or so for the rest of my life. Since November of last year my scans have been good. NED. Those are the magic words that every Stage IV cancer patient wants to hear. But this time it seems my results are somewhat inconclusive. The radiologist says NED but my neck lymph nodes are showing some low level metabolic activity that needs to be monitored. My oncologist isn’t worried at the moment. She says it could be due to infection but with my luck I’m not sure anymore. I seem to have the worst luck ever. Anybody with cancer knows that it is very hard to stay positive sometimes. And no, telling me to “think positive because it helps keep cancer away” doesn’t help. It’s absolutely ok to be angry and sad sometimes because this is a shitty disease and no one deserves to have it. I’m trying my best not to worry about it too much right now but it’s difficult. For the past week I’ve actually been hoping to get sick so that it would explain my swollen lymph nodes. How many people have you met that actually want to get a fever and be sick? I actually want to have strep throat, or an ear infection. Is that weird?

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