PET Scan?

[luvmarypoppins]

Anyone ever have one of these? In the drs. never un ending quest to discover everything wrong with me, they have scheduled this for Monday which may or may not happen because of an insurance snafu, but it will have to wait till after Disney then,

Its a wonderful whole body one. All they told me is nothing after 8 am, drink 32 ounces of water and eat bacon, eggs and cheese only before that, no carbs or sugar whatsoever. The place, dr., etc. has been closed Fridasy and all week end and I forgot to ask if I could take my meds.

Does your whole body go into a machine at once? How long does this last. I did 2 cat scans and another tests that was 1 1/2 hours. That one was sheer torture since the metal table kills my bad back.

Did you feel o.k. after, any side effects. I told dh I sure hope I dont set something off at the airport since we are leaving for Disney on Tues. TIA

 

[C.Ann]

Can't tell you how they are performed, but they are much more accurate and can pick up things much better than your traditional CAT scans and MRI's..

Still no answers, huh? I've been keeping you in my thoughts and prayers..

 

[YellowMickeyPonchos]

I work in Nuclear Medicine and they are fairly easy tests. You won't/shouldn't have any kind of reaction to the injection at all. You don't indicate if they plan on doing a CT in conjunction with it or just a straight PET scan.

The injection is a small amount of very rapidly decaying radioactive tracer - designed to go to certain areas of metabolic activity (ie - glucose - to see sugar uptake in certain tissues). That itself won't cause any reactions. Some people have issues with X-ray contrast (if you have iodine allergies), so that would possibly come into play if they are also doing a CT simultaneously (some machines have one built into it). There are absolutely no side effects from the scan - the radiation naturally decays out of your body really quickly - much more so than other standard nuclear scans. Just make sure you wash your hands well when you go to the bathroom for that day and drink lots of water to help flush your system out after the test.

They do segments of the body at a time - head, then chest, then abdomen, etc. They will try to make you as comfy as possible, as they don't want you to move in the middle. They will then take all the sections and fuse them into one whole body image - that's why they want you to hold still. It might take as long as your CTs did, but the bed is a bit better and they should give you a cushion for your knees. They will work with you as much as they can to make you comfy - if you are comfy, they get better images.

Hopefully this helps. Good luck tomorrow. You'll be fine!

 

[luvmarypoppins]

Can't tell you how they are performed, but they are much more accurate and can pick up things much better than your traditional CAT scans and MRI's..

Still no answers, huh? I've been keeping you in my thoughts and prayers..

Well they are getting somewhere, The thoracic surgeon has seen the one mass and thinks its a lymph node on the ct scan and the other thing she thinks is the thymus gland, which shouldnt be there and is crushing my trachea and swelling my tonsils and salivary glands, oh joy. She said that is definetely coming out. She is referring me to an ENT guy who is some top doctor of 2007 in some magazine. I havent met him yet, I also need another surgery on my stomach, that is another story, she said they cant do that until they fix the lst problems so they can get the breathing tube down my throat for surgery #2. Hmm, nothing like being called "impressive" and "interesting" by doctors.

 

[LuvOrlando]

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