Medical: E to BIDMC PET/CT

I sort-of forgot that some PET instructions include "no strenuous exercise" and biked my usual 6 miles from home to work this morning.

In my defense, (1) I find my bike ride "clarifying" not strenuous and (2) I suspect that instruction is actually "don't use sugary sports/recovery drinks.and don't put yourself in a context where you might accidentally do so out of habit."

[Update: actually it is that they don't want my muscle glycogen depleted, in which case the Radioactive sugar risks being drawn into my muscles--we will know soon if I messed it up and we get a muscle-gram instead of a cancer-gram.]

Other PET instructions (if you Google them) say "no caffeine." Boston's BIDMC does NOT ban caffeine, just ALL sugars, starches, and dairy. On my last visit, the technician speculated that other PET facilities ban caffeinated drinks only because too many patients don't think about the sugar in their sodas or unconsciously put sugar or milk in their coffee or tea.

BIDMC says coffee/tea are.fine as long as they are taken full black. If I pushed, I bet heavy cream would be OK too.

I am on the E train of the Green Line--going out Huntington Ave for the fist time in ages (12 years?). Partly it is so that I don't look all strenuous and sweaty when I arrive (I can still bike share back to the office at around 11a). Partly it is that when I am captive at BIDMC in upcoming chemo weekends, Huntington Ave is where I'd sneak out to go to the Museum of Fine Arts or Isabella Stewart Gardener.

[Update: I have had my needle, saline, radioactive FluroDeoxyGlucose, and saline rinse injection from the same machine that is a cross between a lead-lined floor buffer and Wall-E as last time. Now the sugar has to circulate for an hour to be taken up by sugar-hungry cells, from which it will then be decaying by positron emission.

A proton in the Fluorine decays into a neutron by emitting its charge as a positron (aka an anti-electron). That positron almost immediately crashes into an electron and the two disappear into a puff of gamma rays.

Wherever the gamma rays are detected, that's where either the cancer or other sugar-hungry cell is.  As I lie on that same table, they also do a CAT scan with x-rays to map "the regular me."

The map of sugar hot spots is then overlaid on the image of the regular me.  We are looking to see less cancer, particularly that lump near the ileocecal valve at my right hip, and in the not-easy-to-feel lymphs that neighbor the main lump in my neck.