Well I’m still catching up on what happened last month.
First off I got a PET scan. They use this to locate the cancer.
It begins with injection of a glucose-based radiopharmaceutical. This stuff ends up wherever the cells are doing the most activity. The cancer literally glows, but in case you are wondering, my brain was pretty damn dim which is no great surprise. The thing I have now named charley is in my neck..
The PET scanner detects the gamma rays emitted from the patient, and turns those into electrical signals. These are processed by a computer to generate the images. The CT and PET images are assembled by the computer into a 3-D image of the body. If an area is cancerous, the signals will be stronger there than in surrounding tissue, since more of the radiopharmaceutical will be absorbed in those areas.
Pretty cool, shoot a person up with sugar water and a radioactive tracer. Then scan. Pretty much this was just a confirmation but is also used to determine treatment options.
Next in line was a swallow test. First thought is whoa there buddy, you threading on thin ice. The jokes naturally followed. Ya got to love friends with dirty minds.
Oh and another thing – I hate dentists.
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