Tomorrow, We Scan

Tomorrow morning will be my third CT scan since my adventure with cancer began. As mentioned previously, the point of this scan is to see if the chemo is working and thus to determine whether I continue through (God help me) eight more cycles of chemo or call it quits on the chemo and... do whatever.

The interesting thing about this scan, though, is that they keep talking about my needing to drink the contrast agent. (Oh goodie, a new assault on my digestive system.) Oddly, with both of my prior scans the contrast agent was administered intravenously, with lots of drama about how it would likely make me feel like cold water was rushing down my back. So I'm not sure where the drinking thing came from. Adding to the weirdness, my last chemo nurse scheduled me to drop by the oncology clinic on the way to radiology as she's under the impression that the contrast agent will be administered through my chest port, and only the hem/onc folks are authorized to insert the necessary line. So how the contrast agent will actually be administered is something of a mystery, at least to me. 

It's always fun to be surprised by your medical providers, especially when you're dealing with something as inherently surprising as cancer ("Hey, look where it's turned up now"). 

And, of course, while the oncology docs will have the results on Thursday, I won't get them until my next oncology appointment for Cycle 5. 

Ah well. Unless the results are such that not only is the chemo not working but I only have a week to live (which is highly unlikely given what the tumor markers were doing last week), a week to get the results probably doesn't matter a whole lot.*


* Isn't that actually a fairly well-known joke? Doctor tells the patient, "I've got bad news and worse news. The bad news is you've only got a week to live. The worse news is that the test results came in a week ago." Or something like that.