I have a "mid-treatment" PET scan coming up this Wednesday, and I have no idea what it is going to show, or what I should expect that it shows. I have been doing some research and found this very interesting article:
Near the bottom of the article, there are bunch of images from PET scans of Hodgkins patients. I have always wondered what they looked like.
As I understand it, a PET scan works like this. They inject you with some radioactive, glucose syrup kool-aid stuff (FDG). Your body absorbs the FDG, and tissue with high metabolic activity, like tumors, absorb a lot of it. So, an hour after you get the kool-aid they put you in the tube, arms over your head, and start the scanning (fitting me in there last time was kind of like trying to stuff a coat hanger into a toilet paper roll). When they get the images, they look for dark spots, or as they say in medical-jive, "areas with increased FDG uptake".
Below is an image of a Hodgkins patient before treatment, and then after 4 cycles of treatment (that is 8 rounds of chemo). This person has it in chest, armpit and groin. Notice in image B it is gone in the chest and groin. I assume he wasn't done, because typical treatment is at least 6 cycles. I'll be at 2.5 cycles (5 treatments) when my next scan is done. I wonder what it will show?
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