PET Scan

I had my PET scan today - part of the normal follow-up after radiation therapy, but my leg is also swelling up, so it'll also make sure that my leg swelling isn't being caused by a tumor. Which it might be. Hodgkin's has a lot of symptoms, and for me, my leg swelling up is one of them. But the doctors also think that there's so much scar tissue in my upper leg, leftovers of chemotherapy and radiation and biopsies, that the swelling could very easily be caused by that and not cancer.

We'll see. It'll take a few days for someone to look at my PET scan and decide one way or the other. I can interpret a PET scan; why don't they just give it to me? Liability issues, I'm sure, but I still COULD. It's pretty hard to miss an active cancerous node on a PET scan, unless it happens to be in your liver, heart or brain, which are all pretty active on a PET scan anyway.

I'm not fond of this waiting business, but I find that the more stuff I go through, the less difficult the waiting becomes. Cancer teaches one patience, I guess.

I don't like going to the PET scan place very much. It's one door over from where I got ABVD chemo, and just walking in the front door of the medical center causes my body to tighten up a bit, like it thinks I'm going to turn right instead of left and go get me some poison. And it's hard to look at the cancer survivors with their wispy hair, sunken eyes, and gaunt faces. Even though I was one of them. Am one of them.

You may have noticed that my blog has taken a turn for the geeky lately. This is deliberate. It struck me the other day that cancer or its treatment has invaded practically every part of my life, and there are times (LOTS of times) when I'd just as soon not think about cancer or its treatment. I'm not naive and I know that ignoring it won't make it go away, but as I sit here, there is nothing I can do about cancer one way or the other. And since there's nothing I can do about it, why think about it?

So I rooted around in the castle of my mind and found parts of my life that cancer has never managed to invade. Dumb things, to be sure, but still, cancer-free things. Star Trek. Science fiction goofiness. Physics. I have not, and never will, wear Spock ears to a Star Trek convention, but it doesn't bother me if people think I'm a Trekkie or a geek. There are worse things. (Honestly, which would you rather be called: a Trekkie, or a tandem bone marrow transplant patient? I rest my case.)

I like to think of my mind as being like a castle. Some parts of the castle are airy and open and kind of overly ornate, like Disney recreations of Neuschwanstein or even Versailles, though I suppose there is in strict terms a difference between a castle and a palace. Other parts are darker and grimmer, like the forbidding Krak de Chevaliers in Lebanon. The Trekkie stuff comes from the airier wings; the determination to keep going through chemo even when your body is screaming for it to stop comes from the darker precincts.