You can call me "Radio-Active Man"

Today I had my first PET scan. It was rather interesting. The radio-active isotope that they use only has a life span of 110 minutes, so it is made everyday and delivered from Birmingham. The shipment was late so I had time to get to know the techs and learn about the procedure. Basically they gave me a very small IV (no they didn't use the new port, why did they install it again?) and injected me with a sugar solution laced with radio-active materials. The solution is absorbed by active organs (ie. heart, brain, kidneys...) and the cancer. I had to sit around, holding as still as possible, for about an hour while it all processed. Then they put me in the scan machine (it is the same scan machine that they use for CAT scans) for about 25 minutes and took pictures. They then can overlay the CAT and the PET scans so they can tell exactly how much and where the cancer is. Of course the techs can't officially "read" the results but he did let me look at all of the pictures and showed me how they were layered. I could easily see the cancer on both sides of the neck and in my chest. The really good news is there was no "hot-spots" anywhere below my heart. That means that it has not spread below my diaphragm or in other words it really looks like I am at a stage 2. Great news!

The one thing they told me that I had to avoid children and pregnant women for 24 hours because of my radio-active levels. So basically I had to semi-quarantine myself for the day to not expose anybody else to me. Ellie and Aden had a hard time not getting their standard hugs and kisses this afternoon. They were both very sweet and painted me pictures and brought them to me at work. They brought them in and set them on the desk next to me and blew me kisses. I promised them that I would give them a goodnight kiss and tomorrow everything would be normal. That seemed to help but Shelly said it definitely was hard on them tonight.

This has a scary/pain scale of a .5 Yes there was a needle involved but it was a VERY small one and everything thing else was rather relaxing.

Port update. All I took was a couple of ibuprofen and I was fine today. The stiffness in my neck is all but gone. The site is still a little tender and sore but really not that bad. The worst thing that I have found so far is that a seatbelt shoulder strap goes right over the top of it so I can't wear it properly.

Burke