As in, I had one today.
The truth is out, folks: I think I am in charge, and when shown otherwise, I do not respond well.
We went in for Ken's PET scan this morning, but first I had to go to a rush meeting at work, ugh. Then, when they called him back, I was told I couldn't go with him, because the mobile unit didn't have room for me.
The last (only other) time he had one, it was in a different place. I was allowed to go back with him and sit during the injection (the part he really, really hates) and then while he sat quietly and still for 45 minutes while the radioactive glucose solution* went through his body. And then they even let me go into the room where the scanner machine was and watch his legs go forward and back as his body went back & forth in the scanner.
Today, I got up to go back when he was called and the woman said, "He'll be about 2 hours." As in, go away. I said, "Can't I go with him?" She said, no, there was no place in the mobile unit for me.
And I said, "That makes me deeply unhappy. Last time, I got to go with him." People who don't know me, don't know that my saying those words is about the same as someone else screaming the place down. She explained that in the other place, there might have been room but in this place there was not. Ken said, "I'll be fine."
Yeah, I knew he would be fine. He's not happy about injections but he can deal.
But I was NOT fine. I sat down in the waiting room and wrote a profane and angry e-mail message to a few friends, and then I left because I didn't want to cry in the waiting room. I went to Sonic for a coffee and then to a park around the corner and "had a good cry" which is usually a good thing when I am very angry.
I thought I knew how it was going to go, see, and it didn't go that way. And that was NOT okay. Oh, eventually I was fine. But it didn't take much to strip away the fiction that I am "resting in God," which I heard someone say in Sunday school this week and which has been a fine little mantra for me ever since. (Or maybe "resting" can involve having a screaming hissy fit? No? Oh well.)
A friend from work who has been having radiation treatments there for a different type of cancer came and sat with me for a while when I went back to the waiting room. She is unfailingly positive and was excited about today marking her last radiation treatment. It was a really good thing to be with her for that time.
...
Several weeks ago my counselor listened to me tell all that was going on and how I was keeping all the balls in the air, and she said, "You're doing really, really well. I'm thinking that at some point when things start to slow down for you, you may start to lose it...and we just want to be prepared for that." Uh huh. So, after all that today, I was too late to make it to my next meeting at work and had a blazing headache besides. I went home and went to bed for the rest of the afternoon.
I'm quite confident that Ken's scan will show no cancer. But the process of finding that out...is brutal. Along with everything he's gone through.
All for now. Thanks for listening.
ps: radioactive glucose solution* - you know why they use this? Because cancer EATS sugar. Cancer LOOOOOVES sugar. So in the PET scanner, the places that light up are the places where the sugar has gone...where the cancer is. Nom, nom, nom. Of course, the oncology center is all decorated for Halloween, with ... candy everywhere. I'm furious about this. Along with most other things about the modern cancer treatment industry. But that's another rant, for another day.
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