We're Baaaaack...

Keith and I are back from our trip to the U.P. It was a nice relaxing trip! It really felt like summer up there. Here in Oakland it is easy to forget what season it is.

I am feeling the cumulative effects of chemo. I'm tired out and I've got a couple mouth sores (not so bad I can't eat, just a pain). I'm going to work on building my reserves back up. Lots of healthy eating, napping and walking.

The next couple of days will be a little nerve wracking. My PET CT on Monday will tell us a lot about what comes next for me. My fingers are crossed things look good. As long as things aren't growing I'm doing pretty good, but the best case would be that they can't see anything on the PET CT. That won't mean there is no cancer left, just that it is too small for them to see. PET CT's take "slices" every 2-3mm so tiny spots can be missed.

If you haven't ever had a PET CT, they're kinda cool. It's really two scans PET (positron emission tomography) and CT (computerized tomography) combined in one. They inject you with a radioactively labelled sugar (¹⁸F-FDG). This sugar is just like a regular glucose molecule except one of the -OH groups is replaced with a radioactive isotope of Fluorine. Cells in your body that are metabolically active will take up this sugar. After they inject you with the sugar, you just sit and relax for a while. Since you aren't exercising and using any of your muscles, and cancer is very active, the areas of cancer suck up the sugar faster than everything else. As the radioactive fluorine in the sugar decays it emits a positron. The big machine you slide into during the scan detects the positrons and correlates them with the CT. A CT scan is really just a very fancy set of X rays. When combined the radiologist can see the hot spots from the the PET scan and can see where those hotspots are located within your body/organs with the CT scan. The images are really pretty cool. Maybe I'll include some in my next post.

After the PET CT you'll be slightly radioactive. It won't last long. The half-life of this isotope of fluorine isn't long (an hour and a half or so). The notes you get will instruct you to stay away from babies and make sure to flush the toilet 2x after you pee for the next 24 hours.

I'll post again on Tuesday or Wednesday, after I get the results. Visualize clear scans!