Kim's PET/CT Experience (Part 2)

In my last post, I said this would be a 2-part series on Kim's PET/CT Scan experience. I am going to revise that, and now say it will be a 3-part series, with the third post dropping next week. So this is Part 2 of 3. Thanks for reading.

Our 2018 experience with a PET/CT Scan was very different from our 2016 experience. Back in February 2018, Kim began feeling some mild abdominal pain.  We didn't think much of it as it resembled a slight muscle pull or strain.  In early March, the pain persisted, and she went to see her family doctor.  He offered to send her for an ultrasound, but when we got the date, we ended up cancelling it because it was so close to her six-month routine follow-up CT scan.
In early April, Kim got the CT scan for which we were quite nervous.  We got the result two weeks later, and the scan was clear.  When getting the all clear news about the CT scan, we told our oncologist about the pain Kim was feeling, and after doing a physical exam, the oncologist sent Kim for an ultrasound.  Kim had the ultrasound at the end of April, and we were back to see our oncologist in early May.  The results showed a "mass" in her lower abdomen.  This news obviously made us worried, as the "m" word is almost as bad as the "c" word. Our oncologist immediately scheduled Kim for a PET/CT scan, which we had to go down to Bellingham for, as the waitlist here in BC was too long.

This second PET/CT Scan was on May 29, 2018. I remember that we arrived early down in Bellingham and went to a local fast-food place for a second breakfast. We didn’t eat much, neither of us having much of an appetite. In all honesty, we were already heartbroken that we were having to go through this simply because of what the oncologist could feel in her examination. It meant that whatever was there in Kim's abdomen was big enough to feel with her hand. An oncologist doesn’t send a patient for a PET/CT scan on a whim, especially when they are costing thousands of taxpayer dollars to send us to another country for it. Even without definitive proof, we already knew in our gut that Kim’s cancer was back. It was a trip full of grief and frustration. It felt different this time in that Kim knew what the cancer experience was like. We were no longer innocent to that reality as we were with her first PET/CT scan back in 2016. She knew the experience, she knew the poisonous reality of the chemo treatments that awaited her once this scan proved what she felt–and she hated it, she didn’t want it. This scan was also different, because this time she knew the cancer was in her already then, it was not a baseline scan after surgery like in 2016–it was there, already growing. We knew now that her 2016 treatment hadn’t eradicated her cancer, but the cancer had just gone under cover. All that was needed now was the map that the PET scan would provide on where the cancer had returned and how aggressively.
Other than commenting about how nice the clinic was where Kim had her scan (private U.S. clinic), the drive home was a silent one, each of us trying to steel ourselves for the reality ahead.  
 
We made our way back to the BC Cancer Clinic to meet with our oncologist on June 6th for the PET results. We were told that the cancer was back. The dread and fear we felt heading down to Bellingham and back were rightly founded. We were both crestfallen.
 
Kim had another port put into her chest 2 weeks after we got the result.  The PET/CT scan had done what it was designed to do: to detect the smallest and largest cancers it could. Where the CT alone had failed (showing a clear scan just 6 weeks prior), and what the ultrasound had said was a blurry mass, the PET/CT scan had pinpointed the exact location, size, and severity of disease. We were now looking at another six months of chemo, with the potential of major surgery after that. But there was a big hitch when it came to the potential for surgery; it was dependent on what the next PET/CT Scan would show.
 
It would only be four months later that Kim would find herself back inside a PET machine, this time back again in Vancouver. This experience was not so much one of grief as of anxiety. Everything hung in the balance now. Kim’s potential surgical team had ordered the scan. Kim was three months into her chemo treatments, and if surgery at the end of her chemo was going to be an option, then this scan needed to show that her cancer was in retreat and the chemo was being effective. If the chemo had not yet been effective in shrinking Kim's cancer, surgery was off the table. Kim’s future depended on this scan. When the scan was over, we walked out of the Vancouver Cancer Clinic thinking, “someone somewhere knows something about the future of Kim’s life .”