Blissfully in Remission

A few months ago, Mary and I were going for a Sunday drive near Jordan lake, as we turned onto one of the side roads to come home, I momentarily thought about all the other people I had known who had cancer and died.  It seemed almost like they got better and then it came back and killed them.

My exact thought was: "This could be the end game."

Rather melodramatic when you think of it.   But the headaches have, off and on been both painful and strange.   They show up one place, like in front, and then on the side of my head above my ear.  I get an ear-ache and just strange sensations like tingling or a tactile feeling akin to being touched.


A few weeks ago Mary convinced me to email Lisa and see my oncologist, and  thus it was that I had a PET scan this morning.


A PET/CT scan is so much easier to deal with than an MRI.  First, it doesn't buzz or clang, and there's room enough inside for you to breathe.   Although as a doughnut machine I would say it is about five feet front to back which is somewhat shorter than your run of the mill MRI.

Also you can breathe.  Occasionally.  It has a large doughnut hole which unlike the MRI cannot be mistaken while you are in it for an oddly shaped coffin.   Your nose does not brush the top as you go in.   Your head and neck are not encased in an ancient restraining device that has been updated for the age of plastic.   And they do not give you earplugs that do not work very well.
 
So the PET was relatively pleasant.  Arms over the top of the head and the post nasal drip only made me want to cough and wretch once.  Eyes watering.  

I was served by two of the same technical people that had done this with me before, but this was the first time I noticed that Heather had a quite fetching appearance.  She did seem a little overly ready to help me take down my trousers so the zipper and belt buckle wouldn't mar the scan. 

I arrived at the waiting room about 8:30 and was taken in to "my little room", number 4 to have a catheter put into a vein on the side of my right wrist.  The glucose was tested and came out to be 150 which meant it was good for the scan.  About 10:00 the technician or nurse or whatever rolled a machine in and hooked it up to the catheter.    After testing I was infused with the radioactive glucose look alike drug that the tumor would suck up, if it was there. 

About an hour later I went just across the hall to the the room with the machine and began the process.   I unloaded my pockets, book and jacket onto a chair, was helped by Heather to slide my trousers down while I was under a blanket, and then I was trussed up in straps in much like a hot dog in a bun incongruously wrapped in bandages. 
 
To make a long story short, I am cancer clear.  It's a good feeling. My oncologist is of the opinion that the tumor did damage inside my neck.    
 
When I swing my head a bit from side to side it makes funny cracking sounds, as though I've got knuckles in there.  That is just one of the peculiar sensations that I experience in my neck, aside from the painful sensations that make me think there is something physically wrong in there.

This goes back to the tumor that was eating into my C2 vertebra as though it were its bag lunch sandwich.  The CT scan that I looked at showing little bite marks was taken more than a month before I was first infused, and so the little monster had a very long lunch break to consume bits and pieces.

I know that it grew extensively before the chemotherapy put a halt to it and I will always wonder how much the tumor actually ate.

I may need pain pills, real ones.

I settle now for Skelaxin and Advil. But I still have a few of those Whopper drugs left from the bad old days, and I took one-half of one of those.  I feel some relief coming on.

So slowly.

I just don't like pain. Think of those lucky masochists who love the stuff.