8/20 PET SCAN AND MUGA SCAN aka RADIOACTIVE MAN

Today was my PET and MUGA scans. Both things are pretty simple tests and didn’t take too much time or effort. And the cooled thing about it is that I can honestly say I am radioactive, but i don’t get super powers so that totally sucked!

The PET scan is part of determining the stage of my cancer. Positron emission tomography is the full name of the scan and its part of nuclear medicine. What happened was they injected me with a radioactive sugar which will flow through my body and congregate any where that the cancer is prevalent. The machine is the same as a CT scan machine to its very claustrophobic and you have to sit in it for 30 minutes (which sucked). But once it’s over it’s over, it’s easy. The coolest thing is that they have to give you a letter that says you are radioactive.

The MUGA scan (Multi Gated Acquisition Scan) is kinda similar but this test was used to determine my heart function. In this scan they drew some of my and made it radioactive. Then they out it back into my body. As my heart pumped this radioactive they took pictures of my left ventricle to determine how well my heart pump the blood back out. With chemotherapy heart function can decrease so this helps determine the dosage of the chemo drugs I can do. I’ll probably have to do this test again every 3 months or so to keep my heart as healthy as possible.

We’ll see the results tomorrow of both the bone marrow biopsy and the PET scan and we’ll know if the cancer spread any further. Lets hope it’s not worse than we’ve got so far (*fingers crossed*).