time for some good news.
i had a PET scan a few weeks ago. what seems like years ago now. no, sophia didn't have surgery. a PET scan is positron emission tomography scan. i know this because some pamphlet from the hospital tells me so.
a PET scan is just a fancy CT scan that uses nuclear medicine imagery. it measures body functions like blood flow, oxygen use and glucose metabolism to help the MDs take a guess at how well organs and tissues are functioning. in my case, organs that have been infected with the cancer beast.
anyway.
i peed in a cup and they said i wasn't pregnant and it was cool to proceed. if i had a dollar for every prego test i've taken in the past year, son, i'd make one stripper very happy.
next they injected small amounts of radioactive material in me. i'm quite sure that any amount of radioactive material is too much, but i really wasn't in a position to complain. after all, i needed to know if the cancer was still present.
so we waited a bit and i made smalltalk with this poor sap who was going to be looking at my innards and i'm sure he was praying i'd just shut my mouth. he started the scan using the CT machine which helps the MDs make their educated guesses more educated. i was told it was a PET/CT machine but i've had a hundred, maybe more, CT scans and i didn't see a difference in the machine. whatever, i'm no educated guesser. doctor. whatever. i'm neither.
the scan is a non-invasive procedure. i wasn't in the hospital for any amount of time. just long enough to be annoyed at having to wait. little did i know, i'd have to wait for effing weeks for the damn results. (i'd probably still be waiting because my "real" doctor is on vacation somewhere in mexico (again.) so i had to have a doctor at work call and get the results but whatever, that's beside the point.)
what's the point of this long-winded go-on-forever story? there's no sign of cancer in my body. this doesn't mean i'm cured. it's considered in remission. however. if it stays this way for a fiver, then i (and you) can say i'm cured.
so fuck you, cancer. fuck you.
and thank YOU for all your happy thoughts, support and amazingness.
the battle will never be over. it's always just begun.
but this little step is up and over.