PET Sounds

I had a full-body CT/PET scan this morning. And what did you do, busy bee? 'Cause I do more lying motionless before 9 am than most people do all day.

There was no reason for this scan except that my doctor wanted to establish a baseline. And I think that they bought the machine.

The good thing about a PET scan is that they let you wear your own clothes for it. So I didn't even change out of the ten year-old fleece pants I'd slept in. I don't want no scrubs.

The bad thing about a PET scan is kind of everything else. Or nothing really bad happens, it all just takes a while. Compared to mammography, which involves standing around topless for free, PET is almost restful. The only weird part is that, after you're all checked in, and they've given you an injection of the radioactive stuff through your IV, they want you to sit and relax for an hour, but you're not allowed to read. That's right. You have to sit in your own little room, in a comfy chair, and let the radioactive sugar work its way through your system, going to be metabolized wherever things are getting metabolized. Apparently reading would involve using your arm muscles and your eyes and whatever part of your brain you use to read, though I told the guy that the book I'd brought doesn't actually involve my brain. If you are using those areas, they would take up the sugar and light up on the PET scan instead of letting the sugar go to possible areas of interest, like cancer cells.

Like, I guess if you sat in the PET thingie doing a bicep curl with a heavy weight, the PET camera would be able to see nothing but your arm. Or that's how I understand it. Please now confer upon me an honorary Doctorate in Nuclear Medicine.

So I said, "What if I don't hold the book and instead put it on my lap?" And he still said no. And Matt couldn't come in there and read to me. But I could listen to something. So they tucked me into the magical chair of relaxing and gave me a blanket, and then I fired up the "This American Life" app on my iPhone and started listening to a show from couple weeks back about a hedge fund. I made it through about ten minutes of that and then it was sleepy time. I paused the playback, worrying that I was using too many muscles to do it, and dozed a little bit.

Did I mention that this whole PET camera was not actually in the hospital? But was in fact in a big truck pulled up behind the hospital? We were up at the satellite hospital near our house, not the big serious hospital downtown, so they have this roving PET camera that's there only two days a week. Like the Bookmobile. Or, as Matt said, the Girls Gone Wild bus.

Yeah, so I was resting in the bookmobile until they were ready for me, then they made me get up and walk to the bathroom, and I'm all, what was the point of all that muscle relaxation if I'm hoofing it to the toilet before hopping into the camera? But what do I know? And one of the techs was playing solitaire on one of the computer monitors. I said, "Solitaire, really?" And he said, "Well, ya gotta do something."

So I got to lie on my back for the scan, which was good, and the PET machine is really quiet. MUCH quieter than an MRI, which sounds like lawnmowers having sex really close to your head. And it was only twenty minutes, really. So nothing much to complain about.

I just lay there willing every part of my body to score awesome on the test. You know what I mean. If you're someone who has made an identity or even a career out of doing well in testing situations, it's hard not to want to earn gold stars in medical screening too. And then it turns out that your body parts are just average, or even worse. (Yes, I'm talking about you, former boob.) Like, if someone would just give me my A+ in being a patient now, and have it certified by the proper authorities, I could relax. So could we do that please?

And now also I would like a hot dog and a cosmo.