First Simple Step

I've decided its time to start trying to get healthy - small steps to decrease my risk of getting cancer.

Today's a simple one - floss daily.

Here's the rationale:

Head vs. Heart

A very good friend of mine was diagnosed with metastatic liver cancer on Sept 1, 2009.

My head immediately said, "She's done for - this is the beginning of the end".
But my heart said, "This is some mistake, she'll be fine and next year we'll laugh about this."

I was torn between my head and my heart. Sadly, 3 months and 5 days later my head was proven correct.

Now I'm faced with a diagnosis that isn't nearly as serious as hers was and yet I'm torn. My heart says, "this isn't serious, its going to work out fine." My head wants to agree but its stuck in the script from last time.

When my friend died I lost my invincibility - now I'm worried about me.

Seeing the Doc, Scanning the Bones

I saw my GP yesterday.

She is a lovely woman who's known me for many, many, many years. The time she told me I was pregnant she looked very happy. Today - not so much.

I probably have something called MGUS - monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance. It is diagnosed by eliminating all of the other bad things you could have.

So today I ponied up and had 4 tubes of blood drawn, peed in a cup, collected a big jug for a 24 hour urine (everything you pee over 24 hours goes in the jug) and had a bone scan.

I showed up in nuclear medicine at my hospital and was injected with radioactive tracer - so, just like Spiderman, I have radioactive blood! Depending on how well I hydrate, I'm gonna be "hot" (no kidding - that's the term they use for radioactive) for up to two days - the more I drink the faster my kidneys make glow in the dark pee.

And, no, sadly it doesn't glow in the dark - I shut the lights off and looked just to be sure.

I lay down on a narrow and very hard scanning table. They taped my shoes together to hold my feet still and then I just lay there. On the scale of hard or painful tests - this one doesn't rate as the only thing that hurt was my back from laying on the damn hard bed. They took extra pictures of my feet and then thirty minutes later I was done.

The radiologist saw a "hot spot" on my left foot. This is an area where the tracer is taken up at a higher rate than the rest of the bones. Higher take up means the bone is more metabolically active. Cancerous tissue is more metabolically active and therefore is dark on the scan.

However, I broke my heel in August and that explained the hot spot on my foot. So... clean scan and another bad thing crossed off the list.

FYI - if you dribble pee in your knickers they glow dark on the scan...of course maybe the fact that I didn't have any underwear on explains the no dribble spots! Yay me!

PS - that's a normal bone scan picture up there but its not mine.

The First Inkling

I went to donate plasma at the Canadian Blood Services on August 27. As part of the routine screening, they draw a vial of blood for protein electrophoresis.

Just under two weeks later the clinic called to tell me there was a problem with my protein test. However, it could be because of incorrect storage or an issue with the blood draw - nothing to be concerned about. "Don't come in to donate again, we'll call you when we've cleared this up. Nothing to worry about..."

Friday, September 24 I was sick at home and off the toilet long enough for a nap when the phone rang. There is a problem with my blood, it wasn't the hoped for collection error. "It could be a marker of a serious illness or even cancer - have a nice weekend". Okay - it wasn't quite as abrupt as that but you get the idea.

I'm a nurse and my best friend is a doctor (Dr. M) so I called her up in a bit of a panic and the conversation went something like this:

"Am I dying?" (me screaming)
"Not imminently, you can still buy green bananas."

Wicked sense of humor aside, Dr. M reassured me if I was indeed going to die imminently they would already have me in the ER seeing a hematologist (blood specialist). So I calmed down a bit. Its true, the faster the medical system moves, the more you need to worry.

My blood results were sent to my GP and her office called to give me an appointment the next week. Usually her office books six weeks away. One week seemed both pretty quick and a long ways away at the same time.