My hematologist ordered me on Friday for the PET scan for Monday. As I am a very curious boy, so I spent several hours over the weekend trying to find out everything about the PET scan. Everything started to dovetail as I realized that patients who have only swollen lymph nodes are not sent to this scan, which is incredibly expensive, the waiting list is always very long and only two cities in my country possess the machine. As I read on the information of the PET scan, I came across a mention about its purpose and that was that the machine is used to localize spots within the human body where an unusually high consumption of sugar occurs – in simple terms, a tumor.
Let me explain what a PET scan is. PET is an abbreviation for Positron Emission Tomography, which is a nuclear medicine imaging technique which produces a three-dimensional image or picture of functional processes in the body. The system detects pairs of gamma rays emitted indirectly by a positron-emitting radionuclide, which is introduced into the body on a biologically active molecule. Three-dimensional images of tracer concentration within the body are then constructed by computer analysis.
I spent around four hours there as they were gradually injecting radioactive sugar into my veins along which I had to drink a sort of counterstain (basically a glass of bitter water) so that the scan would localize to spots with higher consumption of glucose in my body.
When I was finished, I walked to the main building with my dad and the nurses took care of me from this point on. I was given a room and the surgery was due the very next morning. The only two things I did there was stare pointlessly at the wall and play chess on my cell phone. As the evening approached, I was becoming a little nervous, since I knew what was coming up, yes, the surgery – the biopsy. I hoped everything would go just fine…
Žiadne komentáre:
Zverejnenie komentára