The mystery continues

We are back from Sydney and the PET scan is over.

Have had a brief chat with one of the oncologists from the team that has been looking after me in Canberra. She was very kind and rang me almost as soon as we got home and told me verbally that the results from the scan are a little unexpected.

The mass in the lung appears not to have absorbed the radioactive glucose - i.e. it is NOT hot while something really small does appear to be hot elsewhere.

I have asked for the report to be sent to me and I will also be asking for the pictures to be sent to me - after all - having paid for them I should be entitled to see them I guess!

Meanwhile I will need some time to consider what it all means and then have a more serious discussion with those who have been looking after me about it all.

I have no wish to discuss something I have not seen. It leaves me without the ability to ask questions about the subject (ME) that is under discussion.

I have no doubt that I am completely unable to understand and interpret a report or indeed the pictures, but where I am ignorant I can ask questions and where I do not understand I can ask for explanations.

Without seeing what others are looking at I am literally in the dark.

Meanwhile the fear and anxiety continue and the fact that even these pictures may not be definitive leaves me with the question which I have been asking all along - namely WHAT ELSE CAN IT BE?

In the old days there were things called case conferences where different people from different professional points of view got together to chew the fat about the "cases" or patients that were
in a treatment facility and this always meant that different points of view, different interpretations and different takes on the 'evidence' were all thrown into the ring and as one hypothesis was advanced about what something could be it was either challenged or refuted by someone else so that the group could whittle the possibilities into shape.

I wonder if these sort of things still go on or whether people are simply too busy in the hurly burly of the modern world?