Later that same day...

If I appear to be glowing, just simply radiant, it’s nothing special. It’s just the Technetium -99m.

I had my CT and bone scans today. The CT scan involved the previously blogged abut Berry Smoothie Barium Sulfate, and the bone scan involved an injection of Technetium-99m (TC99m to the nuclear medicine experts among us). Here’s what it’s all about:

From Wikipedia:

• Technetium-99m is a metastable nuclear isomer of technetium-99, symbolized as 99mTc. The "m" indicates that this is a metastable nuclear isomer (metastable: of, relating to, or being an unstable and transient but relatively long-lived state of a chemical or physical system, as of a supersaturated solution or an excited atom.
• Technetium-99m is a gamma ray-emitting isotope used in radioactive isotope medical tests, for example as a radioactive tracer that medical equipment can detect in the body. It is well suited to the role because it emits readily detectable 140 keV gamma rays (these are about the same wavelength emitted by conventional X-ray diagnostic equipment), and its half-life for gamma emission is 6.01 hours (meaning that about fifteen sixteenths (93.7%) of it decays to 99Tc in 24 hours).
  
• The short half life of the isotope allows for scanning procedures which collect data rapidly, but keep total patient radiation exposure low.
  

From WebMD:

• For a bone scan, a radioactive tracer substance is injected into a vein in the arm. The tracer then travels through the bloodstream and into the bones. A special camera (gamma) takes pictures of the tracer in the bones. This helps show cell activity and function in the bones.
  
• Areas that absorb little or no amount of tracer appear as dark or "cold" spots, which may indicate a lack of blood supply to the bone (bone infarction) or the presence of certain types of cancer. Areas of rapid bone growth or repair absorb increased amounts of the tracer and show up as bright or "hot" spots in the pictures. Hot spots may indicate the presence of a tumor, a fracture, or an infection.

We’re hoping for a boringly uninteresting result. No hot spots, no cold spots.

According to bone scan technician Andrew, there’s more radiation exposure walking outside on a sunny day. He added that if you took the hospital’s entire inventory of this nuclear stuff and worked with it quickly, you could injure a termite. (He was very nice but kept calling me “Ma’am.”)

Are you as curious as I am to see the bill for these tests?? I’ve got a few here in my DCIS Sally file, from biopsies, laboratory charges, pathology charges. It’s frightful what this would cost me if I didn’t have health insurance. I’ll have to compile everyone some one f these days, you’ll understand why rates are so high.

BTW, have you had a mammogram lately? Or, have you reminded someone you love to have one? Your mother? Grandmother? Get on that, please.