PET/CT Scan

The pet scan is like the total recall machine which works like an x-ray except it looks for radioactive sugar concentrations in your body.  The preparation for this is to have a drip of radioactive sugar and wait for it to go round your body. Lymphoma cancer likes radioactive sugar so when the blood has pumped it round your body for about 45 minutes it settles in places where there are areas of lymphoma. Then I lie still on a machine which slowly moves me under a machine which takes a 3D picture of the inside of my entire body.  Results would be ready from this and the bone marrow biopsy the next day.

Bone-marrow biopsy.

Where the biopsy of the lump in my neck had taken a bit of the lump out, this was taking a bit of the inside of my pelvis out through a similar process. I asked if she was going to have to drill through the hard exterior of my bone to get to the marrow but it was more a process of pushing hard into my pelvis bone until it got to the middle then the litter grabber needle would take a tube of red bone marrow out which looked like a tiny worm. She’d given me a local anaesthetic which worked except I could feel everything that was going on (if you’ve ever had teeth taken out with anaesthetic its not exactly painful but still unpleasant) there was some pain as she was pushing so hard into my pelvis that it was clearly having some kind of knock-on effect and had a dull ache over a wide area.

"we are talking about cancer"

I went in to the City Hospital with my mother to meet a very nice lady who said “I’m someone who talked to people about cancer...and we are talking about cancer.” She explained that they’d been unsure which of 2 types of cancer it was, had it been the one they originally thought, she was ready to tell me to write a will and that I had 3 months to live. However, she said, it wasn’t that one and the one it was wasn’t so bad. (its a weird feeling listening intently but just hearing words, my mum was taking notes as I knew I wasn’t retaining any of this) In fact, it was Diffuse Large B cell Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma which is not only treatable but curable. The difference being that ‘treatable’ puts you in remission where they monitor you forever as it may return. ‘Curable’ means it’s gone completely like it had never been there. She went to get some literature on the subject and I joked to my mum about how bad something has to be for the sweetener to be that that it’s not as bad as 3 months to live!

We then went on to meet my Lymphoma consultant, Dr Bishton who arranged pet/ct scan for other occurrences of lymphoma and a biopsy of my bone marrow which would tell them more about how strong I was at producing white blood cells and thus the strength of my immune system.

What Dr. Bishton didn't tell me then was that (according to Dr McMillan who I met later) the chemo is more effective when the rounds are closer together at the beginning and that it matters less in the later rounds.

Ultrasound guided biopsy

This was like an injection into my lump except the took some of it out rather than put something in. Of course they had to cut a bit out like a very small, sharp litter picker. Again no instant results but at least they had something to work with.

Ultrasound

Ultrasound for lump in neck. No results of course, just a slimy neck and an interesting view of the inside of my neck. Also, I booked in for a biopsy of the lump. This is where they take a bit of the lump from my neck to look at and see if its cancer or not.

Lump

Shortly before Christmas 2018, I found a small lump in my neck. I thought I’d go to the doctor who said It’d be nothing but as I had insisted that it must be cancer, would book me in for an ultrasound. I was booked in for January 8th by which time the lump had grown and was impeding my speech and breathing. I was getting keen to get on with resolving this thing whether it was serious or an abscess and just required antibiotics.