The Infamous PET SCAN / March 14, 2017

Everybody has heard of a PET SCAN.  It is a magical machine that you lay on and it scans your body and tells you if you have any cancer.  It is so accurate that it can pick up single cancer cells.  Well, I thought so to but that is not quite the truth. 

I was scheduled for my PET SCAN on March 14th.  It is an easy and painless scan, similar to an MRI or a CT SCAN.  The way it works is you go two days without eating ANY sugar, breads or other carbohydrates.  You cannot exercise or doing anything strenuous for 24 hours before the scan.  When you show up at the hospital you are given an IV which has a radioactive sugar in it. 

The reason for this is that cancer absolutely loves sugar.  Cancer is basically a bunch of cells that are reproducing at an accelerated rate.  Because the cancer cells reproduce or split so quickly, they need a lot of food.  Sugar is the best source of energy for these cells.

Once you are given this radioactive sugar, you are put in a recliner for an hour while the sugar goes through your body.  They then take you to the scan and scan your whole body.  The scan finds the organs or tumors that are up taking this sugar and it causes these organs or tumors to glow from the radiation.

After I finished this scan, I was told my doctor would have the results the next day.  When I go to see him I should be able to find out where the primary tumor is, and how advanced the cancer is.  The concern is that it may be in the lungs.  If that is the case, the cure rate just dropped extensively.


Now we go home and pretend everything is normal and wait for the results the next day.


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