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!.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Sunday, October 26, 2008
First race since returning home.
I've just got home from a full day's worth of motorsport and I'm worn out!.
I had a few concerns about whether I would be fit enough to man-handle my 550 horse power Mitsubishi Evolution around the streets of Seaview in my first outing in over six months. I needn't have worried.
The very first run in the car, a warm-up run, was fast enough to win the event out-right. I then did another faster run later in the day that consolidated the win. So all my fears about loosing my edge and not being up to the level of competition I'd previously been at before treatment have been laid to rest.
I only had one "moment" during the day. I had decided to not do my 4th and final run of the day as it was raining and it would be impossible to go faster in the wet than my earlier runs in the dry.
But then I bumped into my friend Alf and his son Daniel, and Daniel asked if I would take him with me on my final run of the day.
So we strapped him into the passengers seat and proceeded to do what I had promised to be a fairly sedate run around the tight street circuit on a very wet road. Amazingly the car had heaps more grip than I expected so I drove faster and faster as I found the limits of adhesion. Then as we completed the last tricky turn on what was now becoming a blindingly fast run, the engine threw off it's power-steering belt.
This left me mid corner with incredibly heavy steering and me facing a concrete kerb.
There is no way I could return the steering to where it needed to be in time to avoid colliding with the kerb, so I took my foot off the brake as we went up it, and re-applied it once we were on the footpath. There we were, parked perfectly on the footpath directly in front of a crowd of spectators. None of whom would have had any idea why I suddenly decided mid race to leave the road and park my car in such a bizarre place for no apparent reason. No damage was done, we drove very slowly back to the pits, fitted a replacement belt, packed up and went back the clubrooms to pick up my trophies.
A great day! (If you want to get an idea of what it is like to do a run of the Port Rd Street Sprint in my car. Check out this footage from a previous year.) >>Click here<<
PS: Still no night sweats now for three nights in a row.
I had a few concerns about whether I would be fit enough to man-handle my 550 horse power Mitsubishi Evolution around the streets of Seaview in my first outing in over six months. I needn't have worried.
The very first run in the car, a warm-up run, was fast enough to win the event out-right. I then did another faster run later in the day that consolidated the win. So all my fears about loosing my edge and not being up to the level of competition I'd previously been at before treatment have been laid to rest.
I only had one "moment" during the day. I had decided to not do my 4th and final run of the day as it was raining and it would be impossible to go faster in the wet than my earlier runs in the dry.
But then I bumped into my friend Alf and his son Daniel, and Daniel asked if I would take him with me on my final run of the day.
So we strapped him into the passengers seat and proceeded to do what I had promised to be a fairly sedate run around the tight street circuit on a very wet road. Amazingly the car had heaps more grip than I expected so I drove faster and faster as I found the limits of adhesion. Then as we completed the last tricky turn on what was now becoming a blindingly fast run, the engine threw off it's power-steering belt.
This left me mid corner with incredibly heavy steering and me facing a concrete kerb.
There is no way I could return the steering to where it needed to be in time to avoid colliding with the kerb, so I took my foot off the brake as we went up it, and re-applied it once we were on the footpath. There we were, parked perfectly on the footpath directly in front of a crowd of spectators. None of whom would have had any idea why I suddenly decided mid race to leave the road and park my car in such a bizarre place for no apparent reason. No damage was done, we drove very slowly back to the pits, fitted a replacement belt, packed up and went back the clubrooms to pick up my trophies.
A great day! (If you want to get an idea of what it is like to do a run of the Port Rd Street Sprint in my car. Check out this footage from a previous year.) >>Click here<<
PS: Still no night sweats now for three nights in a row.
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