PET Scan and What's Coming Next

PET scan is interesting. I got carb-starved for 24 hours. No carbs, just proteins and vegetables to eat. Drink lots of fluids. Drive the blood sugar down.

Then they gave me a radioactive sugar solution through an IV. After that I got to sit for about an hour. 2 things happen in that hour. Normal stuff latches onto the sugar, uses it, and flushes itself of the sugar. Stuff that's growing latches on to the sugar and hangs on. That leaves only growing stuff with the radioactive sugar.

Then there's a 25-minute ride through a scanning machine that's looking for anything radioactive. Anything radioactive is something growing, which is the cancer. Slick.

They also run a CT scan so they can superimpose the radioactive spots over the body structures. They ran the thing from head to about mid-thigh. Now, instead of just poking and prodding me, they've got pics of all my internal structure superimposed with the spots with cancer. Well, hopefully with the spot where the source of the cancer is located.

Tomorrow is an exploratory surgery to look at stuff in my neck and I imagine make a plan for removing the lump in my neck. After that it's probably Tuesday to have the lump removed. The surgery on the lump is called a neck dissection, a rather unpleasant term. It's scheduled for an overnight stay.

Here's the catch with the neck dissection. After that I find out what all they had to remove to get rid of the lump. They may have an idea tomorrow, but they have to get in and actually remove it to determine exactly what all it's hooked on to. Possible bad outcomes include removing muscles, nerves, and a lot of other things in my neck that I'm rather fond of. Having normal use of all functions involving my right arm, vocal cords, and ability to hold my head upright is a good result.

After the surgery is 2 months (typically) of radiation. The lump on my neck isn't likely to do any damage that isn't already done. It's likely to respond well to radiation and any little bits they can't get or miss with the surgery generally shrivel to nothing from the radiation.

As long as the original source remains active, it will keep putting new growth out there. That's bad. There are some source locations that aren't big problems. There are others that are big problems.