karl&myeloma

I met with Bob, the managing partner of the company I work for.

Bob explained that his wife, Chris, had been through cancer therapy about 10 years ago, and that he knew what I would be up against. He said that he was reducing my work load and assured me that I would not have to worry about my job and that I should concentrate on becoming fully healthy. He said I should work from home as much as needed until I felt both strong enough and well enough to come into the office. He lent me an iPad to use from home and when in various doctor’s waiting rooms saying it would be much easier to read and respond to email while I was waiting for my turn to come up. I thanked him for his understanding.

Later that day, I had the PET/CT scan and the Spinal MRI. The PET/CT is interesting in that they first want to make sure your blood sugar is not too high. I also had to have low carbohydrate meal the night before, and no carbs that morning at breakfast and nothing but water after 8:30 AM. After checking my sugar, I was injected with fluordeoxyglucose, and again I was radioactive. I then was made to relax for an hour to quiet muscular activity which can be misinterpreted in this test. The scan itself only took an hour and was quite easy to go through.

The Spinal MRI was another story. Each part of the spine, the cervical, thoracic and lumbar together with the complete pelvis take about 40 minutes on the MRI table. I then got injected with another contrast agent, gadolinium, and the major parts were checked again to compare one against the other without the contrast agent. All told I was 3-1/2 hours on the MRI table. I had a break to sit up for about 5 minutes and one restroom break. By the last 30 minutes or so, my back really hurt. I could not wait to get off that thing.