Breast Cancer
Sometimes life gets so busy that we hardly find time enough to breathe. We make our plans and try as hard as we can to stick to them but, then along comes life and upends the best of intentions on your calendar. My plans for the last three months of 2023 were to work as much as possible. Christmas shop till I dropped and plan a tremendous feast for all my family to enjoy. Well those were my intentions. However cancer had another plan and it didn’t coincide with my plans at all.
Three days after my echocardiogram I was scheduled for my first PET scan. I have had an MRI in the past and knew a PET was more of an enclosed space. Now I’m not one to be in a closed space, if you know what I mean? Me and closed spaces have an agreement, I’ll volunteer to go in but you have to give me a window with a view. I had no idea what a PET scan entailed and quite frankly I was scared. No one was available to go with me that day and I knew I would just have to suck it up and go. How hard could it be? You lay on the hardest substance known to mankind on your back and move in and out of a spherical object until you were sure your liver was frying from all the radiation rotating around you. Well, that wasn’t exactly all it would entail. I drove the fifteen minutes or so to get to the imaging center all the way shivering as if it were thirty below outside. My cars thermometer said sixty eight. I tapped it a few times just to make sure it wasn’t malfunctioning. It wasn’t.
I pulled into the parking space just outside the Imaging center and walked in to check in. I sat in the waiting area for about 5 minutes, then a nice lady called me back. We made small talk walking down the hallway until we reached a little room where she would take my blood pressure and temperature. She then turned to me with a hospital gown and said take off everything and put this on and leave the front open, Ill be back to start your IV. Wait, what? IV? I asked her why would I need an IV? She said for the nuclear contrast and walked out the door. I felt as if someone had just punched me in the gut as hard as they could. I operated in zombie mode while taking off my clothes and putting on the gown. Nuclear what???? oh boy, here they come! The tears started rolling down my face and there was no stopping them. I was a sobbing mess when the nurse came in to start my IV. She wanted to know what was wrong and I told her I didn’t understand why they wanted to Nuke me. She kindly smiled and explained that it was a very small amount of radiation that they put into my veins so that it would highlight any cancer cells that were in my blood if any. It would tell them where my tumor was exactly located and to see if the cancer had spread anywhere else. She said that it wasn’t enough to hurt me at all and I shouldn’t have any side effects from it. I would have to wait an hour after it was administered before they could do the scan though.
OK, I can do this.
I calmed down and the nurse started my IV. She administered the nuclear medicine and asked me if I needed anything. Something to drink. TV remote? No thank you I said and I told her I was sorry that I broke down like a scared child on her. She told me that I would be surprised at the number of adults who cry when they are going through this test. Its scary for anyone who doesn’t know what to expect. Well I said, If someone could have told me what to expect before hand that I would not have been so shocked. She agreed. We kind of laughed to ease the moment and I said Nu-clear, isn’t very clear at all when you don’t know what it is.
An hour later. I was laid out on the hardest bed known to mankind and actually strapped down. I wasn’t in a closed space but actually very open and sterile. The shakes had finally wore off and I lay there as still as I possibly could while the spherical object above my head began to whirl and twirl and sound very much like a jet starting up. I marveled at science and technology at play. Who comes up with these ideas to develop such a contraption as this? How interesting it would be to have a conversation with someone that intelligent. And as that thought played out in my head I heard the sound of the machine start to decline. I was helped up told to dress and they would send the results to Dr O.
I walked out to my car and climbed in the driver seat. I had survived. I had conquered the fear of the unknown. I would be a survivor in my walk through this cancer journey. I was Gods child. I was ready for a nap.