You end up doing, saying, and thinking a lot of unexpected things when you're diagnosed with cancer, but I really never expected to say this: I enjoyed the hell out of my PET scan. It's another slide-through-the-tube test, but where the MRI belongs at Gitmo, you could easily sell the painted ladies of Ritzy Address on monthly PET scans. I was greeted in the waiting room by a short guy named Joe, and surely his last name was Addams. He had a wandering eye, and a bizarrely soothing way of speaking. "Hellooo Mr. ----. Follooww meeee." I think he really said that too, except for calling me "----."
I changed into a gown, and we walked past an Exam Room, and a Break Room, until we came to the Quiet Room. The lights were low, there were a couple of instrument trays in the corner, a little office chair, and a big easy chair. Joe put me in the easy chair and explained the test: they would inject me with radioactive glucose, and because cancer cells metabolize things much faster than regular cells, we would find out, by tracking the glowing glucose, where they were. And because we were measuring metabolism, apparently it was important that I be caaalmmmm. In fact, after I was injected with the glucose, I would be forbidden to speak, because we didn't want to activate my brain.
Then Joe got out the "syringe." Except that this "syringe" was slightly larger than a Pringles can, and he had to lift it with two hands. Encased in lead, you see. "This is really more for my protection that yours, since I have to deal with this stuff day in and day out." I laughed. There's no sense protecting me from it, since it's about to be INJECTED INTO MY BODY.
The injection was quick and painless, and then Joe leaned my chair back, put my feet up, got me a pillow and a warm blanket, turned out the lights and literally tip-toed around the room, verrry genttllly picking things up and putting them down, and verrry slooowlyyy wheeling the trays away. The door quietly clicked shut, and I had 45 minutes to doze.
Joe came back to get me and took me to an Exam Room, and I'm sure I was high on the radiation or glucose, or maybe just in a newer wing of the hospital, but the exam room was so big and airy and there was a cool breeze blowing, so I didn't mind that when I was on the sled they velcroed my arms tight to my sides and slid me into the tube. I was unnvervingly happy, just...smiling.
