Fighting Breast Cancer

Today I went to Mayo so that I could have a PET Scan done.  A PET Scan is the most sensitive cancer detecting scan available.  If you have a cancer cell in your body, the PET Scan will find it.  In order for it to be effective, I was not allowed to do any strenuous activity or lifting for 24 hours.  I also had to fast.  I hate fasting, because I get really edgy and cranky.  Anyway, I was given an information sheet that explained how the PET Scan worked.  In a nutshell, it said that I would be given a radioactive glucose solution intraveneously.  Cancer is a sugar feeder, so it “feeds” on the sugar solution faster than any other cell in my body.  (Think about that the next time you have a piece of cake.)  As the cancer ”eats” the sugar, it absorbs the radioactive element.  Once this step is complete, I will be led to the scanning machine.  The areas on my body with cancer will glow yellow and orange on the scan’s image.

PET Scans are great, but a lot of times it’s difficult for cancer patients to have one because the machines are so expensive that many hospitals do not have them.  In fact, the Mayo Clinic’s PET Scan is a mobile unit that they lend out to different hospitals around the valley.  Each PET Scan costs approximately $5000…at least, that’s how much they charged me.  Could be more or less somewhere else.

Anyway, I went to the Mayo Clinic early that morning for my appointment.  I was really cranky because I couldn’t eat and I had to drive in rush hour traffic.  I was probably also a little cranky about dishing out $5000 that morning- on the spot.  By the time the nurse called me, I was starting to feel really antsy because I wanted to get this test over with so I could eat. 

I was led to a room with several vinyl reclining chairs.  This is when I learned that the nurse was going to have to put the IV in my foot.  She told me it was because the Doctor needed the dye fed at the opposite end of my body.  Since the cancer was in my right breast, the IV needed to be inserted in my left foot.  I had a real problem with that.  I do not like the thought of needles being dug into my feet.  Still, I didn’t have a choice.  The nurse reclined me back and began to look for a vein in my foot.  She wasn’t having much luck.  When she thought she had finally found one, she began to dig the needle in.  She kept missing the vein so she had to keep digging.  It was very painful and I started to feel like I was blacking out.  My ears started ringing and I broke out in a cold sweat.  Slowly the blackness washed over me and I passed out.

When I woke up, I was confused.  Then I felt embarrassed.  There were nurses standing over me talking to me, but I couldn’t figure out what they were saying.  I thought I had fallen asleep when I wasn’t supposed to.  Then I noticed something really strange:  I was fully reclined in the vinly chair, I had an oxygen mask on, and I couldn’t put my arms down.  They were clenched straight up in the air, and I kept thinking to myself, “Now that’s weird.  Why won’t my arms go down?”  I was too dizzy and confused to formulate this question to one of the nurses (who was now yelling at me, but I still couldn’t hear what she was saying through the ringing in my ears) so I just looked at her, kind of smiled and said, “Hi!”

The moment I spoke, the ringing in my ears began to fade and my arms relaxed enough so that I could rest them on the chair.  Then one of the nurses explained what happened.  I had passed out, and I had had a seizure.  That was why I couldn’t put my arms down.  I hadn’t noticed before, but two nurses had been holding my legs.  The nurses had called for a doctor to come in and examine me quickly.  Once he reviewed my history, he looked at me and told me that he wanted me to have a CT Scan of my brain, right then and there. 

“Why?”

“Considering that you have cancer and you just had a seizure, we need to see if [the cancer] has spread to your brain.”

I felt crestfallen.  The idea of the cancer spreading to my brain made me feel so depressed and dejected that I started to cry.  I couldn’t do this.  Who the hell am I to think that I can handle something as big as cancer?  I was all alone at the hospital, sobbing like a baby.  It was all too much.

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