PET Scan

I had a PET scan yesterday.

UCH PET Scanner

Is it trivial to comment on how uninspiring the experience was? After all, it's a hospital procedure, not Alton Towers, I've got cancer, I'm not on holiday. Nevertheless, the FDG PET/CT scan was by far the most tedious cancer-related experience so far. We went into a dreary featureless room with lead-lined bays and I was given a dose of Fluorine-18 and then lay still for about an hour. We chatted, then I dozed for a bit. Then off to the scanner where I lay down and was whizzed in and out for another 40 minutes or so. It was cold, but mostly just soporific.

I don't mind it being dull, the point was to get good images, so that the team can make some decisions next Monday. But I'm trying to be honest, and it was, well, boring.

I'd expected more sensation from the scanner, maybe something like the fillings in my teeth being tugged, as you get under pylons, or a noise like a tube train like I heard in the CT scanner. Or maybe the occasional disembodied human voice "Breath in Carol, now breathe out". Or some beeps.

We were tired, after another early start, and I was hungry because I needed to fast before the procedure so that the isotope was rapidly taken up by the cancer. Maybe that influenced my mood.

We quite liked the PET chairs, though.