Home Again

Got my PET scan Tuesday. Not to complain, but the drink I had to take for breakfast and lunch was truly, wretchedly disgusting. By the time of the scan (2 PM) I was hallucinating food. As always, blood was drawn when I first got there. We met with Jason, our NP, at 1:00 and he said the numbers looked good except for sodium, which was a little low again but not enough to worry about yet. But I have to start drinking less water again. He also said that he didn't expect all the cancer to be gone at this point, but that it should be shrunk significantly. He will email me the results sometime soon, hopefully by tomorrow.

The scan took a half hour, and was preceded by an injection of radioactive sugar followed by a wait of an hour for the sugar to be absorbed throughout my body. The radioactivity is absorbed much more thoroughly by the cancer cells than by regular healthy cells, so when the scan is done the cancer cells "light up" for the radiologist. It's really a very painless procedure but I would recommend anyone getting a PET scan to try to get it scheduled as early in the day as possible because you're not going to eat anything between supper the night before and the end of the scan.

It's nice to be home again. We went to lunch with Nancy's brother and three sisters (and one great-niece) yesterday. It was great fun. Even though they have all been emailing and calling a lot, we don't get to see them often enough. Nancy's brother Bob had his hair cut short in sympathy with me (he was going to get his head shaved bald but couldn't quite do it, but then I'm not quite bald yet either). Her sisters all brought gifts, from vitamins and holy water (from Lourdes) for me to birthday presents for our granddaughter Maddy. It was a beautiful, sunny and warm day. So, true to this winter, we have a major snowstorm coming this evening into tomorrow. The forecast is for 6 - 12 inches. Can't wait for spring.

I just finished installing Linux on my laptop. When I ordered the machine several years ago I made the mistake of choosing Windows Vista rather than XP. Big mistake! I finally decided I had suffered long enough with the beast and downloaded Ubuntu Linux, a free Unix-based operating system. I now have a brand-new old computer. It is fast, stable (Vista would have locked up at least once in the time it took to type the last paragraph) and looks and feels like my Mac. I'm very excited...