The PET Scan..

I had my PET scan done yesterday. It went really well.
I guess after four scans I must be getting used to it, as I was very relaxed right through-out. I now hold the record for having recieved the most number of PET scans in NZ.

Basically a PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scan is very similar to a CT scan. It just takes a little longer. An hour before the scan I am injected with a radioactive sugar isotope. Then I'm left on a bed for an hour to lay perfectly still and relax.
Cancer cells are very sugar hungry, so they soak up the isotope. This makes it very easy to identify them on a scan. The reason for laying perfectly still is so that your muscles don't soak up too much of the sugar and give false positives or cloud the results.
This time round I was also given a barium solution to drink as well. This helps highlight your intestines and bowel.

The scan itself takes about 30 minutes. It's a lot quicker these days than when I had one of the first PET scans done in NZ back in 2006, which was over an hour. It's just a case of laying on a table and being fed into a huge donut shaped scanner. It takes thousands of pictures in slices that are then assembled in such a way that the Doctors can virtually fly through the images of my body and look for any hot-spots.

I also got one piece of good news yesterday. My insurance company has agreed to pay for the scan. I wasn't sure if they would and the amount of paper work they want is a little daunting. However I figured it was worth the effort and I quickly rushed around last week putting a claim together. They phoned yesterday morning and said it was approved. The good thing is that now I'm on record with them and any future claims will be a lot simpler.

Next post will be mid next week when I get the PET scan results.. Fingers crossed for a clean bill of health!.