I'm Just Glowing!

November 2013

I'm at the hospital for my “staging tests” - a fancy way of describing a whole batch of examinations and procedures designed to work out exactly how far cancer has progressed through the body, in order to help my medical team put together the most appropriate treatment.

Proving to the CPPs that I'm OK

I meet J, an efficient but pleasant nuclear medicine nurse, who is to set up a full-body bone scan for me. She explains in her rather posh voice that I'll be injected with an IV substance that will bind to my bones, allowing any “hot spots” indicating spreading cancer to show up in a scanner. This all sounds very space-agey to me, so I'm up for it. Hell, I wasn't doing anything else this afternoon, right? I feel like I'm watching a fascinating medical documentary, which would be great if not for the fact I'm starring in it.

When it's time for my injection, she puts on protective long gloves. She then gets out a syringe lined thickly in metal, with a radioactive warning sticker on the side.

“So, you're protecting yourself from that stuff, right?”  

Ever wanted that "glowing skin" look...?

“Yes, it's a radioisotope. It's radioactive.”

“And....you're putting it in my vein?”

“Yes.”

“Hokay, then...”

I find this strangely amusing, and can't stop chuckling. Two hours later, I've had some lunch and returned to the Nuclear Medicine Department for the scan. As I lay on the scanner bed in position, I remember that some tests I've had in the past require me to hold my breath at intervals, so I ask if I can breathe normally during the scan. J is completely deadpan.

“I'd suggest you breathe normally. The test takes twenty minutes. If you hold your breath for that long, you've got more to worry about than cancer and being dead would probably make the test pointless.”

I start laughing, and then can't stop. I'm lying in a huge nuclear medicine scanner, diagnosed with cancer, and I have an absolutely incapacitating fit of the giggles.  Thankfully, J is a patient sort of woman,  and waits until I'm calmer before beginning the scan, which eventually shows that I have no cancer in my bones.  So far, so good!