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Tumour - Long update
Oct. 25th, 2004 08:19 pmOK, so it's taken me the best part of a week to make this.
Story summary here: http://www.livejournal.com/users/matthewp/157130.html
Tuesday evening went well; we met up at Taurus and had drinks and food. Paid for my the production company :-) Yay for free food. Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
softfruit, dagonet, angeoverherefor coming along. They were filming this bit so conversation was remarkably controlled ;-)
Then we went back to mine, Helen arrived and I had the interview. They asked some awkwardquestions and tried to evoke a reaction from me. I think I surprised myself bybeing remarkably calm throughoutit all. I wouldn't say I don'tcare about it, but I had no problems answering anything, didn't need to take breaks due to crying or to re-compose myself. *shrug*
Then theyfilmed me doing my daily routine such as showering etc which was fine until the hot water ran out. Bah to cold showers.
The morning after:
Got a taxi to the hospital and Helen accompanied me. I'm so grateful for that. The angst was building up, but I think I was more concerned about the results than the tumour itself, if you can see the distinction.
The scan itself was a two-pass scan, seperated by 90 minutes. They started by giving me an injection which made me radioactive. This was so that they can track the flow of sugar around my body; glucose is more prevalent in cells which are multiplying, so a radiaction level higher than they expect is indicative of replication faster than they expect. The first scan took 90 minutes and I was very relaxed during it all. So much so that I fell asleep and woke up about 20 minutes before the end.
Then I had lunch and had the second scan. The consultant was on site so able to interpet the results straight away, and I did this under camera (without having heard the results before-hand). It was as they expected still growing rapidly. As they had done a full body scan, they had more information available. It showed that the cancerous cells had not spread to my lymph nodes (the core of the immune system), so further spread had not taken place aeither. That much at least was a relief.
Despite this, I'm going for a biopsy within a week or so and for surgery to have it removed faily soon after - *handwave* - withina month, say.
Then I had a closing interview, away from the doctor but all the questions blur into one so I forget the details of what I said.
Geeky bit:
I asked to see the scan pictures (having still not even seen the MRI scan from a few months ago). I recognised it as a Unix-basedsystem and pointed this out. They technician confirmed that it was and we mutually identified ourselves as geeks. The scanner takes several lateral slices for each of the pictures - 270-odd in total for me. It then converts that to a 3Dmodel. He had written an extention to make that model rotatable and zoomable. Yay for geekery.
The scan pictures were greyscale, with darkness showing high levels of radiation. It turns out that the area on my leg was as dark as my kidneys and heart. I don't know what the units are, but the fact that the rates were of a similar magnitude were slightly concerning. I've asked for this to be emailed to me, but I haven't got it yet. I'll be sure to post it when it arrives.
Images downloadable from http://mat.tp/2004/10/27/tumour.html
Next update soon.
Story summary here: http://www.livejournal.com/users/matthewp/157130.html
Tuesday evening went well; we met up at Taurus and had drinks and food. Paid for my the production company :-) Yay for free food. Thanks to
softfruit, dagonet, angeoverherefor coming along. They were filming this bit so conversation was remarkably controlled ;-)Then we went back to mine, Helen arrived and I had the interview. They asked some awkwardquestions and tried to evoke a reaction from me. I think I surprised myself bybeing remarkably calm throughoutit all. I wouldn't say I don'tcare about it, but I had no problems answering anything, didn't need to take breaks due to crying or to re-compose myself. *shrug*
Then theyfilmed me doing my daily routine such as showering etc which was fine until the hot water ran out. Bah to cold showers.
The morning after:
Got a taxi to the hospital and Helen accompanied me. I'm so grateful for that. The angst was building up, but I think I was more concerned about the results than the tumour itself, if you can see the distinction.
The scan itself was a two-pass scan, seperated by 90 minutes. They started by giving me an injection which made me radioactive. This was so that they can track the flow of sugar around my body; glucose is more prevalent in cells which are multiplying, so a radiaction level higher than they expect is indicative of replication faster than they expect. The first scan took 90 minutes and I was very relaxed during it all. So much so that I fell asleep and woke up about 20 minutes before the end.
Then I had lunch and had the second scan. The consultant was on site so able to interpet the results straight away, and I did this under camera (without having heard the results before-hand). It was as they expected still growing rapidly. As they had done a full body scan, they had more information available. It showed that the cancerous cells had not spread to my lymph nodes (the core of the immune system), so further spread had not taken place aeither. That much at least was a relief.
Despite this, I'm going for a biopsy within a week or so and for surgery to have it removed faily soon after - *handwave* - withina month, say.
Then I had a closing interview, away from the doctor but all the questions blur into one so I forget the details of what I said.
Geeky bit:
I asked to see the scan pictures (having still not even seen the MRI scan from a few months ago). I recognised it as a Unix-basedsystem and pointed this out. They technician confirmed that it was and we mutually identified ourselves as geeks. The scanner takes several lateral slices for each of the pictures - 270-odd in total for me. It then converts that to a 3Dmodel. He had written an extention to make that model rotatable and zoomable. Yay for geekery.
The scan pictures were greyscale, with darkness showing high levels of radiation. It turns out that the area on my leg was as dark as my kidneys and heart. I don't know what the units are, but the fact that the rates were of a similar magnitude were slightly concerning. I've asked for this to be emailed to me, but I haven't got it yet. I'll be sure to post it when it arrives.
Images downloadable from http://mat.tp/2004/10/27/tumour.html
Next update soon.
