Tuesday 15 March 2011

Scans

Two scans today.  This morning was PET - positron emission tomography.  Great technology - they inject  fluorodeoxyglucose labelled with (short half-life) positron-emitting fluorine, and detect the matching pairs of gamma rays emitted when the positrons annihilate.  So they get an image of where blood sugar is being taken up - and cancers use a lot of it.


H's scan showed the T8 tumour as the most active.  And it found two small spots we didn't know about, one on a cervical vertebra and one on a rib.  H tells me this is a good result, since it might have shown many more growths.


This afternoon was a heart MRI.  Unexpectedly, I was allowed into the scanner room, having carefully emptied my pockets of anything metallic, and taken off my belt.  It's like medicine in a science fiction film.  It took an hour, so they must know a lot about her heart now.  The point of the scan is that the primary could be in her heart, in which case it can't be doing much yet but they ought to know about it if they're going to operate on her at some time.  No results yet, H may use her medical privileges to take a peek tomorrow.

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