More about the Scan
I want to expand on what my parents posted about Enrique's latest scan last week.
We had gone to the hospital expecting to learn if there was any cancer left in his body.
After 30 minutes in a lying under one-ton scanner, a quarter inch from his nose, he was done. We learned that there wasn't a doctor available to interpret the results. That was frustrating.
In the meantime we were able to see the image taken by the scan on the monitor of the technician. It showed a big glowing patch where Enrique's thryoid used to be.
We both separately came to the conclusion that this was bad - although I tried to convince him it wasn't.
It wasn't until two days later, when we spoke with a doctor by phone, that we learned it was good.
The whole point of the scan was to determine if his body had absorbed the radiation - the glowing patch meant that it had. In 3-6 months they'll do another scan to see if the cancer was killed by the radiation.
Somehow we hadn't understood this from our previous conversations with the doctors. It's hard to know if we were bad listeners or they were bad explainers. But I'm more inclined to give us the benefit of the doubt than I would have four months ago.
We had gone to the hospital expecting to learn if there was any cancer left in his body.
After 30 minutes in a lying under one-ton scanner, a quarter inch from his nose, he was done. We learned that there wasn't a doctor available to interpret the results. That was frustrating.
In the meantime we were able to see the image taken by the scan on the monitor of the technician. It showed a big glowing patch where Enrique's thryoid used to be.
We both separately came to the conclusion that this was bad - although I tried to convince him it wasn't.
It wasn't until two days later, when we spoke with a doctor by phone, that we learned it was good.
The whole point of the scan was to determine if his body had absorbed the radiation - the glowing patch meant that it had. In 3-6 months they'll do another scan to see if the cancer was killed by the radiation.
Somehow we hadn't understood this from our previous conversations with the doctors. It's hard to know if we were bad listeners or they were bad explainers. But I'm more inclined to give us the benefit of the doubt than I would have four months ago.
posted by eliot at 9:46 PM
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