Not So ‘Berry Yum’

I’m sitting in this darkened room for an hour. You have to do that to prep for a PET Scan. They give you what’s called radioactive glucose, and after injected, it goes to anything active within your body. To make it not light anything up that shouldn’t be, you have to be fairly still and make little movement. I can’t even talk. The only movement I am making is with my thumbs (using my blackberry) - which they don’t scan my thumbs anyhow, so I’m okay with just that.

I had to start preparing for the PET last night. I was not allowed to have any carbs, no exercise, and nothing to eat or drink after midnight. Its after 11 am now and I am starving. I also had to take my first of three bottles of bairum last night at 10. I asked for the berry smoothie flavor this time, which led me to the clever name of not so berry yum. Get it? Barium/berry yum. Right. Anyhow. I also had to choke down a bottle at 9:10, an hour before my appt that was supposed to start at 10:10. Operative word being ’supposed’.

I was due for another port flush and labs before my PET, but that kinda screwed things up. My chemo nurse, Lynette, took one look at my port and said, “Nope, not gonna access that!”. Since my port flush on Monday (I actually videotaped it, just need to finish editing it and post it for you) my port has been very red, warm, itchy and sore. She asked why I hadn’t called about it. I figured that, its happened before, it’s just irritated, eh, whatever. Didn’t want to bother with calling the cancer center, yet once again, for yet another problem. Well, I guess I should have because now, after my PET, I have to go back and be seen by one of Dr. Clark’s PAs to look at it. Plus they needed to do crap loads of more lab work. She said since she didn’t want to use my port she would have to draw from my arm. I asked her just to put in an IV because they were going to do it for the PET anyhow, and if she did it I could have the cold spray to numb it, plus there is no reason to be stuck 8 times. Just put in one IV and just do everything for that.

After sitting there a bit in the infusion room, they decided to have me do my PET since I was becoming increasingly late for it. So, where I was going to see the PA before, has now been moved to after. And I’m going to be even MORE late to work. I was hoping to be done with my pet by noon and go in, but now I won’t even start my PET til noon. I would say a good 20-40 minutes for the scan itself, and them the PA visit. Aye! Aggravating. So I’m sittint in this room now, oblivious to what time it is because I have been typing this on my Crackberry. I think I’m going to put the phone down and rest. Sleep sounds good right now. Until later - I will keep ya posted.

-Brandi