PET Scan

By this time tomorrow, I should be emitting gamma rays. Yes, tomorrow is my PET scan. They'll no doubt tell me that Dawg is chunky and ill-behaved, Elmo is obsessive and spoiled, Baxter is trouble after nightfall and Max is mean clean through.

I wonder if they'll give me my bone marrow biopsy results tomorrow or not. I'm getting a little anxious to know, one way or the other, if I have to deal with another course of chemo or not.

What complicates the matter is that I scare myself. I've become fairly obsessive about checking myself for swollen nodes, especially in my left groin where the Original Node popped up. And every now and then I feel a bump and think Oh no, it's back! The node is back! This is always accompanied by a sinking sensation in my guts, a sinking sensation fueled by the all-too-recent memory of the first course of chemotherapy.

Then I realize it isn't a node at all; I'm merely feeling the upper end of my femur. Or am I? No, really, it's the femur. Or is it a node?? No, it's the femur. Or...

You get the idea. And it isn't pretty.

My recovery from chemo isn't going as well as I expected, by the way. I guess one shouldn't expect to bounce back immediately from six months of being poisoned, but I really do wish my digestive tract would get itself sorted out. I can deal with the tingling in my feet, the ache in my legs, the decaying fingernails, the lack of nasal hair, the neuralgia in my hands, but the intestinal chaos is really too much.

So you can perhaps understand the horror I feel when I think I've found a fresh node...