The Scans

I’ve had three scans over the past two months. The first two took place during my second stay in hospital in early September. The third was last week. My first CT scan was routine, on my admission as a new patient. It identified a suspicious spot on my tenth rib, which could be an early indication of a bone tumour. This scared me very much. My tenth rib was near where I’d just had a tumour removed.

The radiologist said I needed a bone scan to check this out. Three worrying days later, a radiographer appeared at my bedside with a small metal container with radioactive materials in it. This was injected into my bloodstream. She seemed very casual in handling the wee container, so I asked her how much radioactivity had just been pumped into me. Put it this way, she said, you’re exposed to more radioactivity than this when you have a CT scan.

In the scanning room I lay down on a raised bed. I had to be very still for half an hour as a large camera on a metal arm followed the contours of my body very slowly. The radioactive materials highlighted spots where your body was making new bone and the special camera recorded them. These hot-spots could be places where you had a new fracture or a tumour.

I spent a terrible night on the ward, waiting for the results. And when I got them I wasn’t put out of my misery. ‘It’s not positive,’ said the doctor, ‘and it’s not negative’. I looked at him perplexed. ‘There’s no evidence of bone-making going on in your tenth rib,’ he said, ‘but the type of cancer you have can be present without any bone-making going on’. I shook my head in disbelief. ‘We’re discharging you,’ he said, ‘and sending these results to your Oncologist.’

This mental distress was on top of my recent surgery. I was in a lot of pain and still disorientated from the anaesthetic. Three very difficult and fraught weeks later I got to see the Oncologist; or rather the Oncologist’s ‘Reg’ (Registrar), the most senior of the junior doctors, who seemed to end up doing a heavy workload.

‘I’ll be frank with you,’ he said, ‘we don’t know what the spot on your tenth rib is.’

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘but what might it be?’  

‘It could be nothing, a false reading, or it could be some damage connected to the surgery you recently had,' he paused, ‘or it could be a new tumour.’

‘Oh dear,’ I said, ‘so what are you going to do about it?’

‘Wait and see,’ he said. ‘We’ll scan you again in six weeks and see if anything has developed.’

‘Six weeks,’ I gasped, ‘aren’t you going to test it now?’

‘Not at this stage,’ he said, ’a biopsy would have to be done under general anaesthetic, almost the same procedure as to remove the rib itself.’

‘And what would you do if it was a bone tumour?’ I asked.

‘I couldn’t speculate,’ he said, ‘but when we see a tumour in the bone, that’s usually a sign of more widespread recurrences’.

I went home with a dense black cloud hanging over me. I was still recovering from surgery. My body was sore and complaining. My head was full of dread. I hoped against hope that the spot was caused by some damage from the surgery. The surgical table in an operating theatre is narrow and your body must be pulled and pushed around when you are anaesthetised. However, the suspicious spot was on the inside of the rib. I imagined the surgeon cutting away at my rear abdominal muscles with heavy pressure and tearing the attachment to the rib, like when I was carving up a chicken for Sunday dinner. Equally well, I could imagine the tumour cells, that had been just a few inches away from the rib for the best part of eighteen months, spreading there and then throughout my body.

The wait was interminable. I was irritable, moody and couldn’t concentrate. I went for walks, watched TV, surfed the internet. Friends called. Nothing seemed to distract me from the black cloud for very long. Not even the always patient and considerate T, who did her very best to help me.

I returned to the dilemma again and again. Night was always the worst. In sleepless hours I weighed the scant evidence repeatedly. I became my own jury. And often I was my own hanging judge.

The day of the CT scan came. I headed to the Cancer Centre, like I had done so many times before, and went through the machine.

Back home, I waited for days for the call. It normally came from my GP, who would access the scan report online.

The mobile rang. My heart leapt. It was the GP. The hospital intranet was under repair, so he couldn’t get the report. I begged him to try again. I just couldn’t wait the two weeks until my next hospital appointment.

Two terrible days later, another call. Breathless, I listened. The scan was clear.

I gasped. Relief flooded through me, then deep exhaustion.