was monday the 23rd of June at the local hospital (thankfully I didn't have to drive far or anything) -- and the same very nice people who checked me in and were taking care of me that thursday that i swallowed the radiation were there taking care of me again -- they're very nice and put me to ease immediately.
first thing i was so glad of was that i took an endocet (muscle relaxer/painkiller/putsmeateaser) and i know you might be thinking "you're starting to be a druggie" and the answer to that is "nope, not really -- i save those up for emergencies... like when i had to have laserbeams shot at my eyeball for half an hour and lying motionless on a table for 90 minutes with machines whirring around you wondering if the cancer spread anywhere because your brain doesn't work the way it used to? yeah. those times? so worth it.
so i was feeling pretty mellow and relaxed when i got to the hospital -- went through the standard waiting areas while they got me checked in (they have these really awesome rolly-cart things with their computers on -- everything's wireless and portable -- they use vocera to call each other and page people -- it's all very high-tech. reminds me of that line from Jurassic Park that the rich delusional man kept saying "spared no expense!!")...
then the nice lady (Mary) from NucMeds came out and got me and brought me back into the scanning room -- apparently it was called a Gamma Scan b/c they are scanning for gamma rays from the radiation. So it wasn't a CAT scan or an MRI -- totally different piece of equipment entirely. It reminded me more of a CT scan machine (the giant donut shaped scanner that the bed passed through the middle of) -- except for a few key differences...
they had me just lie down on the table (didn't have to put that silly hospital gown on or anything -- which made me more relaxed -- better to be in your own clothes! i could even have kept my shoes on if i'd wanted but somehow that felt weird so i slipped them off -- i had the foresight to wear tennis shoes and socks as opposed to my typical attire of flipflops because i figured my feet would freeze if i had to wear the gown)
then she moved the table slightly -- i barely felt anything moving -- i could hear a humming sound but it was faint... the lights in the room were dimmed (which also really helped with the relaxation side of things) -- then she mentioned to me that i would need to not chew my gum or move my jaw while they did the scan of my head -- for about 10 minutes -- at which point i was really embarrassed b/c i'd totally forgotten about the gum in my mouth -- she offered me a tissue, i popped the gum in it and then, to avoid her having to handle my lovely tissue of gum -- i started to slip the tissue into my pocket. She stopped me saying that because of the saliva on the gum, that it would show up as a spot on the scan so she'd throw it away for me. Saliva being one of the main ways your body gets rid of this radiation...
then once we got that all settled, she came back over and said for me to lie still as she centered the table below this giant (like 4ft by 4ft) plate which she lowered until it was ohhhhhhhh like 2 inches from my nose... now at this point my thoughts were along the lines of "hallelujah thank you Lord for endocet" because without it i'd have been climbing the walls from clausterphobia -- but because i was so relaxed from the endocet it didn't seem to matter much... i just closed my eyes and lay there -- i wasn't sleepy (even though it was really early for me) just lay there and my thoughts kinda bombarded me while i listened to the quiet whir of the machine... then it seemed to get lighter in the room and i peeked open one eye to see that the table had moved down enough that i could see the ceiling past the edge of the plate above me.
the whole thing took about an hour or so -- and then they had to take some more shots of my throat area -- another ten mins of lying there but this time the table didn't move -- i was just right below that plate and by this point some of my fingers had fallen asleep and were tingling and my legs were feeling a bit twitchy.
I got the results of the scan yesterday -- basically it seems that it was consistent with residual tissue rather than another influx of cancerous cells. So the radiation should kill that tissue off and we have to go through the testing again in six months... so not out of the woods just yet, but a bit of good news nonetheless....