The scan

Interesting story from USA Today: "Cancer Patients Who Do Research Get Newest Drugs." The title is pretty much what the article says: patients who take the time to do research about the latest developements in treatments are more likely to have them prescribed. Sometimes they're even prescribed off-label -- drugs that are approved for advanced cancers are given for earlier stages.

Which is why I pay so much attention to these things. I need to be an advocate for myself. I trust Dr. R a lot, but I want to make sure he's thinking about everything he should be thinking about. (In my humble opinion.)

I also do all of that research because I'm a big nerd. But that's another matter entirely.

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The scan went OK yesterday.

It was indeed a PET scan, not a CT. I hadn't had a PET since last April, apparently (I haven't gone back through the blog archives to confirm, but that seems about right). The PET is more involved than the CT. I had to drink my Barium milkshake and then lie still for an hour, calming my metabolism so that only the cancer cells would show up on the scan as being active. Then I was in the tube for about 30 minutes with my arms stretched out behind me. Once again, my shoulders fell asleep and I spent the half houring fighting intestinal distress. But overall, it was alright.

As she was preparing to put an IV line into my arm, the PET technician asked how my veins were. "Excellent," I said. "My excellent veins are one of the few things I really have going for me right now." So I got a little bit of a laugh, anyway.

I'll see Dr. R on Friday for the scan results, unless he calls before then. From what I remember, CT results come in pretty quickly, but PETs take a little longer to read and analyze.

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My online support group's web site has been down for a couple of days. Apparently, the owners were doing some kind of software upgrade.

As of this writing, I still can't post anything, but I can read what others have already written. Which means I can't share stories of my intestinal distress with others who have been there. It seemed like I was stuck with telling you, but I decided I'd hold off. I gave my brother a little bit of it on the phone last night. That satisfied my need to chat.