Our cancer center doesn't have dedicated PET/CT facilities (but it's likely getting one soon) so the mobile truck is brought in twice a week. Used to be once a week--the increase means the cancer center is becoming recognized as a good place for treatment. And, sadly, that cancer continues to increase it's presence among us.
The injection Kevin receives is called FDG-18; it's a sugar and a radioactive element. The sugar bonds with the active metabolic processes in Kev's body (cancer cells are outrageously metabolically active and will show up as 'hot spots', especially when other metabolic processes are slowed down through fasting and resting) and the radionuclide gives off gamma rays which are detected by the PET machine.
You got all that, right? It's the only cool thing that comes with cancer. I get to use words like "radionuclide" in a sentence.
So PET measures chemistry in his body while the CT side of the scan measures anatomical structure. Put together and we get a 3-D view inside his body that differentiates between structure like scar tissue from surgery or radiation and metabolically active cells which may indicate new cancer growth.
It's very cool technology and pretty definitive in terms of telling us what's going on with his body. We should get the results in a week or so. Or experience has been that bad news comes in faster on these things than good news so we're in no hurry to get a phone call.
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