Scanxiety

I had my quarterly PET/CT scans today. Since being diagnosed I have had these scans and blood tests done every three months, looking for evidence of cancer. To date, I have gotten through the exams with nothing but good news. The four little words I want to hear each time is we find "no evidence of disease." It doesn't mean you are cured. It means that there is nothing obvious going on that the doctors can detect. The disease is ALWAYS there, lurking. You are never cured. Cancer patients live with the disease and hope and pray to keep it at bay.


You become somewhat fatalistic, steeling yourself for bad news each time. You hope and pray for good news knowing deep down that one day the news will not be so good. Yes, people can live for many years with cancer, and you hope to be one of them. That does not stop you, however, from becoming anxious around scan time. I call it "scanxiety."

In the past two years I must have had close to a dozen scans. At first I was not bothered by the PET/CT (and could not understand people who are) until a scan I had in January of 2008.

The procedure involves the radiology center preping you by injecting a radioactive isotope, which needs to circulate in your body for about an hour. After that, you are taken to the PET/CT machine. The CT scan is a relatively quick procedure and maybe takes 5 minutes -- in and out. The full body PET scan, however, takes about 25 minutes normally.

For lung cancer, the technicans position you on a table with your arms above your head and straps you down to keep you from moving. You are told to "stay still and don't move". The technicians then leave the room and the lights are dimmed. The machine starts up with a soft whirring noize and the table slowly slides you into the tube.

You would think, what's the big deal? But that 25 minutes in the machine, with nothing but white walls of the tube surrounding you was the longest 25 minutes of my life, the first time I did it. The second time I did it in January of 2008 I was already apprehensive about the scan. That day the radiology center was having trouble with newly installed software that runs the machine. The computer kept crashing so the scan took nearly an hour. Toward the end I felt like I was being tortured. My fingers were numb and I became increasingly restless and panicy. The best way I can think to describe it is the feeling of slowly drowning and becoming increasingly more desparate to reach the surface. I was never so happy when that intermitable test finally finished

Ever since that scan, I have to have a sedative with my injection to get me in a relaxed state. Yoko comes with me to hold my hand and stimulate me during the test. I also bring my i-pod along as a way of measuring the time and having something other than the what walls of the machine to focus on. These days I am getting through the scans more easily and my anxiety is less than it was. Let's hope the results continue to be good.