Bone scan

Patrice had given me a prescription for a bone scan 'just to check', he was a bit vague about what this meant but I took the prescription and thought it's another thing to do.  I left it a week as I had just had enough of the medical interventions and tests and check ups.

The exam is called a scintigraphie.

http://www.cancer.be/la-scintigraphie-osseuse

I rang the specialised centre that does them and they insisted that it was done before the radiotherapy began so the race was on because the only day they offered was the following day.  The complication was that the centre is around 20km from our home and I needed someone to drive me there and back not just once but twice the next day.

So I called friends and was lucky enough to find two good people that were free and able to drive me, wait and drive me home again.  So first visit to the centre was to be injected with a radioactive substance.  I am practised in my 'needle' speech now and the doctor promised I wouldn't feel a thing as they used baby needles.  And just for once, I didn't feel anything and they were telling the truth!  Hurrah.  I asked for some clarification as to why exactly I was doing this test and the doctor told me that it was to check that there was no metastases from the original cancer and that there were no other cancers in the bones. She explained that it was important to do this test before the radiotherapy because the protocol would have to change if they found anything on that day (ie chemotherapy would replace the radiotherapy).

So this test suddenly became, in my head, much more important than I had thought.

I spent a few hours at home and reassuring Z picked me up and we headed on out to the centre again for the scan which was pretty scary.  I could keep my clothes on (this was already a good thing, however).  I lay down on the platform which was was going to go into a tunnel with a camera which came very close to the body, almost touching so I would be totally enclosed in a very small space and not able to move for 15 minutes.  Just before the assistant left me on my own in the room after explaining what would happen, he suggested I closed my eyes.  This was excellent advice.

So I closed my eyes and felt the bed moving forward and the feeling of the space getting smaller.  In fact the camera was so close to my body that when I breathed, my ribs touched the camera and it retracted.  So glad not to have my eyes open!  I kept my eyes firmly closed and imagined that I was lying down in a small boat on a turquoise sea under the shining sun and I stayed there until the guy told me the test was over and was surprised to see that the bed had come out of the tunnel already.

I was told to go into the waiting area and see the receptionist where I received an envelope with my results.  I went to see my friend who was patiently waiting and we both looked at the envelope and didn't know what to do.  I was thinking if the results were ok then they wouldn't need to explain them to me but we wondered if they were so bad then they wanted my oncologist to explain them to me.  We were stumped as to whether we should open it or not.  There were doctors about and we thought maybe we should ask them.  In the end I just opened the envelope and we both read the results' conclusion together.  Nothing had been detected - no other cancers and no metastases.  Tears came to my eyes and I sighed a big sigh of relief, well we both did.  What a horribly stressful day but it ended well with the best results possible.  We drove home with a lighter heart but feeling a bit like I'd been on a roller coaster today.

That was a particuarly difficult week, I was glad to see the back of it.

métastases

métastases

métastases