I had the PET scan yesterday. I won’t get into detail about the 2hr process; it was relatively easy if you’ve been through a CT or MRI (and it involved a 45 minute nap!). After the initial prep, the technologist took me into the room with the machine. It seemed like she’d read my entire medical record because she knew I was BRCA positive. So was she; she told me a whole story about her sister who’d had lots of surgery (mastectomy, hysterectomy, oophorectomy, etc) and has refused to go to the doctor since then. “Should she go?” she asked me. “I mean, look at you. You did all of that, and it came back. Did you go to the doctor?” “Well,” I said, “yeah, I want to the doctor every year for a check-up. But the doctor didn’t catch this. I found a lump while I was in the shower, just like you see in the movies.” After saying that, I felt a little irresponsible and mumbled, “Still, seems like it would be a good idea to go to a doctor?”
The scan didn’t take long, and when she slid me out of the machine, I asked if she saw anything. She shook her head and said, “just in that area of the breast.” A doctor will still need to read the images, but I feel pretty confident that this woman knows what she’s talking about. Most techs either tell you what they see when it’s nothing, or when they see something or it’s too advanced for them to really know what to look for, they say, “you’ll have to wait for the doctors report.” I’m trying not to be too optimistic – nothin’ like having your hopes and dreams for a cancer-free body smashed to bits (and I already did that once this month) – but I am feeling like maybe this won’t be as bad as I imagined.
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