Medical: What a PET scan is like.

Somewhere in Woburn MA, there is a nuclear facility that ships radioactive Fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) twice a day to Beth Israel Deaconess.  The amount is determined by the number, timing, and bodyweight of all PET scans each half day.

All things being equal, they will have to make twice as much FDG that morning for the 2pm scan than for the Noon scan simply because half of whatever was available at noon will have undergone decay by 2pm.  It is just algebra, but still pretty impressive.

Dissolved in saline, FDG is shipped in a 40-lb lead-encased vial like this:

Carried in a shipping box like this:

Upon receipt, it is  loaded into a cross between Wall-E and a lead-lined floor buffer, like this:

It gets wheeled very slowly into your tiny waiting room. After prepping an IV, the technologist enters your weight into the screen.  Knowing the current time and potency (determined by half-lives since creation), the machine automatically infuses the same dose of radiation (about 10 chest x-rays), even though more and more fluid has to be injected as the day goes on because the fluid is loosing its radiation-per-liter.

After injecting you with your dose Then they tell you that you will have to wait 1 hour as your glucose-deprived body draws the FDG out of your blood and into the busiest cells--your cancer.

During that hour you are free to sit quietly in a lead-lined room with a heavy door. If you close the door, you'll notice a sign on the back that says:

PLEASE DO NOT TALK WHILE YOU WAIT

no cellphone calls

But, since the technologists have had to flee your radioactive self, there's nobody around to explain or enforce this rule. And since the door is extremely thick and heavy (a sandwich of 1/8th of lead between two planks of 1" thick solid wood) who's ever going to hear?  And actually, reception is pretty good, considering you're a T-mobile customer in a lead lined room.

When it is time, they ensure that your bladder is empty, and usher you into yet another room with a giant donut with a bed that slides you in and out.  In this case, a combined CT xray (orbiting around the donut to map your outlines) and the 90% of the rest of the donut which hides a cylinder of gamma-ray detectors. The computer will overlay the gamma ray hot spots onto the xray image.

Then, it looks pretty much like this:

Then the challenge is to lie still for 20 minutes as you radiate your gamma rays into the detector.  It seems like they took 4 sectional images at 5 minutes each (shoulders, chest, gut, and groin).

The hardest part was suspending my arms "above" my head (had I been standing).  Other than that, I should have napped.

I will get my results tomorrow.