bad, bad brain chemicals

I went for my scan this morning and was fairly agitated about it. My head was stuffed up and I was afraid I would have to mouth-breathe for the duration, or worse, that I'd sneeze and give myself a concussion in the process. (The scanner is placed very close over your head during these things, and it sits there for 10 minutes at a time.)

My NucMed doctor, Dr. L, wasn't there so his colleague Dr. S reviewed the scans with me. First: there were NO distant metastases! Well, so much for my "feelings", huh? I do know better than to put any stock in them when my brain is not right -- from being off-meds, from having a cold, from just feeling crummy. When you're slightly depressed, of course you're going to expect the worst, right? Bad, bad brain chemicals, making me see the world so negatively!

At least I know they're there, contributing to my bad moods. That helps.

There was still a ton of uptake in my neck. There were 3 major areas of uptake: one salivary gland, the right thyroid bed, and two tiny spots below that which we think were superstinial lymph nodes. Dr. S was quite blunt about how good a scan this was: "This is exactly what we want to see. There was a lot of uptake."

The only oddity was that salivary gland, because it was only on the one side -- but Dr. S that it is not unheard-of for there to be uneven uptake like that, and neither is it unheard-of for the salivary glands to show uptake. It doesn't mean there was cancer there. It's hard to know exactly what's going on in there without biopsying it, and there's really no reason to do that.

I'll go back again in 6 months for a follow-up scan -- still not sure what the prep for that is -- and hopefully we won't see anything. That would be the best possible outcome.

It's rather astonishing to me to have a (relatively) good medical report. Usually things don't go so well for me, I'm used to there being bizarre or unexpected results. It would be nice if this is the beginning of a new trend.