My Body Scan (PET/CT)

In case you're interested, here's what my body scan looks like. You'll notice a white splotch at about the shoulder (right breast) and another down low (liver). That's not actually cancer you're seeing, it's metabolic activity. What they do is inject radioactive glucose into your system. Cancer cells love to eat sugar, and the white splotches are showing metabolic activity, or, the glucose being consumed. They refer to them as "highly suspicious" areas. It's also in my T4 and T12 vertebrae, but I don't know where that is on the scan.

 

I'll be asking (demanding, if necessary) another scan in an undecided number of months (2-4?) to check for change. They don't measure this with a ruler, since it's not an object, it's activity. They measure something called SUV, Standard Uptake Value, noting how much glucose has been consumed in the measured amount of time. At least that's my understanding.

 

You'll also notice white at the very top in my noggin. Since the brain uses so much glucose, they ignore that. But the surgeon did say that they didn't see anything "suspicious" in that partial scan of my head.

I think I want to know for sure if there's anything in my head besides a brain, so I'm getting an MRI tonight. Do I want to know? YesNoYesNo…

 

**UPDATE** The brain scan is done. It only took 20 minutes, results in 1-2 days. They scanned my noggin for 15 minutes, then injected a dye into my arm and scanned for 5 more minutes. It was a piece o'cake. It was noisy, but had ear plugs, closed my eyes and relaxed. I suppose I wasn't as far into the machine as scanning a different body part, since they were just doing my head, so I could still see out of the machine which was nice.

P.S. Not too happy about the rolls of fat just above my waist. Haha!