PET

 

When you think of a pet, you think of a cute cuddly dog or cat or fishes in a tank or pond… my younger son had even asked for a pet elephant at a point. However, the only thing I could see were fishes on the ceiling. The pictures of the fishes looked almost alive trapped in colourful glass, perhaps an attempt to cheer patients undergoing the scan.

The full form of the PET in medical parlance is Positron Emission Tomography. One goes through this scan to check for various diseases in the body or the absence of thereof if you have already completed your treatment/ surgery as I had…what they called a follow up scan. It sounds like an intimidating procedure as it involves injecting a radioactive substance into your body and then doing a scan inside a machine, much like a futuristic gizmo. Perhaps, it could be a thing for putting the human body to cold freeze and storing it for posterity like they do in Star Wars! But currently it functions only as a scanner.

When I was called in for the procedure, a pink shirted radiologist (all of them wore pink shirts) came and explained the process to me in a PET suite, a little cupboard of a room with an austere bed and medicine trolley filled with needles, gauze and stuff. The radiologist told me about the radioactive stuff and then I asked him if it was similar to carbon dating… you know the stuff they do to unearth the age of Egyptian mummies and Neanderthal men…he seemed a little nonplussed and told me it was nothing like that!

The most intimidating thing for me was the insertion of the cannula (the plastic needle that is used for multiple injections or drips). They could not find the veins in my hands! It took nearly half-an-hour and a few nurses to complete the procedure. After that, I was given the medication and told to relax… again a hard task as I was also told not to move or turn or sing or read or talk. I was told to sleep. I could twitch my muscles and my mind had the freedom to swing. The nurse offered to turn off the light for me. No, I said, I wanted the light. I tried to rest as I felt the radioactive stuff course through my veins. It would have been nice to have some attractive pictures or tiles on the walls and ceiling to assist in making the atmosphere more relaxed, I thought.

Then there was the explosion of the matter and antimatter in my veins… I was drifting… my sons had told me there was anti-matter in the radioactive stuff… but here I was praying for a long life to the Creator of energy, matter and anti-matter.

I could actually feel the stuff coursing through my body while I lay like a stiffened mummy of the Egyptian genre, my stomach rumbled and grumbled. I had been instructed to starve over night for the scan. This time it was for the radioactive glucose to react exactly to the sugar absorption levels in ones body. Presence of sugars would distract the readings.

After half-an-hour, they toddled me off to the scan as the medicine has a short life of only a couple of hours. The medicine chose or chose not to light up during the process, bright lights indicated a concentration of sugar. The lighted-up part could be cancerous.

I had been thinking of going into the machine with my hands crossed like an Egyptian mummy and pretending to be Cleopatra, instead I went with my hands above my head, trapped by straps with Velcro like a captive prisoner… my turn to be nonplussed! I felt like a princess in harem pants or perhaps princess Leia of Star Wars fame, imprisoned by Jaba the Hutt. I tend to analogize with anecdotes from Star Wars and Harry Potter as my sons are addicted to these. But, then, I think that is a good thing as they have positive messages of hope. In Harry Potter, we are taught to dispel our worst fears (embodied in the form taken by creatures called bogarts) with ‘riddikulus’   and in the original Star Wars, the good always wins in addition to John Williams’s upbeat music. Despite all that, I was a little zapped (or taken aback) to have my hands tied above my head.

And then I noticed the ceiling in the room was like an underwater scenario… as much as it could be. So, perhaps, one could dream of being a prisoner in Nemo’s submarine hold! Or, princess Leia captive during an adventure to JaJa Binks underwater world… a new idea for another Star Wars episode, take note Disney films. Actually, I thought of neither. I just looked around because everything was so strange, so different from what I imagined. I was just very glad thinking this might prove to be the end of my medical journey battling with tumours and rumours.

My imagination could have taken flight across the Egyptian desserts and across vibrant blue skies. But wanting really to live, I prayed, I waited, I sighed… hoping this would be my last ride to realms of futuristic fancy under the influence of medication.

Once I was through with it and the radiologist came to free me, one look at him smiling and I knew I was free of cancer. Earlier, before my surgery, the radiologist who did the Contrast Dye CT Scan had looked so sad when she came to release me from my strapping.

It all happened so fast and I was cleansed off the deadly growth in a jiffy. I found that the journey back was not as daunting as I had feared. It was a matter of how you addressed your fears. I have learnt that the best way to overcome anything is a vivid imagination, laughter and support from family and friends. If one gives in to fear as one does to bullying, one crumbles to ashes. You just have to stand up to it, pray very hard and suddenly you are back to enjoying the sunshine, bird calls, children and life in general. It does take time to recuperate fully, but that is not so bad as long as you have hope, friends, love and happiness.

 

 

 

 

Toothfully True

With due apologies to Edvard Munch…

This is dedicated to all those who have sat and are likely to sit on a dentist’s chair, under the threat posed by drills, pliers, needles and jabs.

I have a friend who told me that she and her sister kicked dentists in terror of all the paraphernalia and the horror of being under the tooth doctor’s surveillance. In the last week, I too have had three sessions or three and a half hours of dental care. After the second session, I felt like wobbly jelly in a bowl till… I was advised by a co-sufferer to think happy thoughts. As I waited to be called for my third session, he suggested I think of floating or flying in the sky… I looked daggers at him…

However, when I sat on the chair, it started… I could not stop laughing while my mouth hung open in imitation of Edvard Munch’s Scream, my tongue stayed in place under a clamped rubber sheet, which under normal circumstances would have generated a fear of an asphyxiating death. As the dentist jabbed and drilled to her heart’s content, my stomach shook with laughter… and my throat gurgled in delight.

I was thinking what if Edvard Munch’s Scream screamed not for the angst in him but was holding his mouth open for a dental job… what if he floated up to the skies, as my messiah had suggested, and in a fit of dental angst doubled up with ‘laughing gas’, which is also a title by P.G.Wodehouse. Unfortunately, they do not use laughing gas on adults any more. My dentist said they use it only on children now.

As my stomach shook and I snorted masked and goggled on a chair, the dentist paused in concern, “Everything all right?” she asked in hesitation.

I struggled to keep my snort under control as I indicated all was fine. A1… as much as possible under a dentist’s drill.

Nowadays, they make the patient wear goggles while doing the job so that, they explained, the sprays of water etc do not go into their eyes or the bright lights disturb their introspective meditation of the toothy kind! My introspection took me deeper into the realms of uncontrollable mirth. I thought of what Wodehouse might say looking at all the paraphernalia, especially the x-rays. Those looked like equipment out of Star Wars or Agents of Shield. Maybe it was too post Wodehouse. But if the creator of Laughing Gas (the book, not the gas) had seen them, he would definitely have much to say. There was an x-ray machine where the doctor stuffed a film in a sharp plastic case in my mouth and told me to relax so that it would not hurt. How you relax with an object like that in your mouth held in place by knife like metal protrusions is a question only a dentist can answer if she undergoes a similar trial.

The other x-ray equipment looked intimidating. You stand with your hands on the machine and bite a plastic rod stuck to the structure as the x-ray camera revolves around your head on an extended white arm. You feel a bit like the solar system. You keep wondering if the equipment is going to smash your head as it draws menacingly closer and closer. The process continues for thirty long seconds after which the dental assistant comes cheerfully in and helps you out of the contraption. By then, you are hoping the most intimidating is over. And that happens in the first session.

In the second session, decked in sunglasses like Men in Black under the glare of bright lights as I sat with my mouth open in imitation of Edvard Munch’s painting, the dentist said, “ We need to use numbing.” Promptly, the nurse put a cooling gel and I thought, “Ah! Thank god… not a needle.”

Needless to say I am terrified of injections and stopped visiting dentists after the last one told me she needed to use an injection to numb my gums for further procedure. I gave dentists a break for half a decade but then, the pain started at the back again, a dull ache that persisted for days. So, I was compelled to amble into the dental clinic. This time the dentists said nothing about an injection till suddenly I felt a sharp jab hit my gum like a fat needle and it stayed on forever and ever. The nurse kept stroking my cheek with gauze and then my gums and cheek lost all sensations. I saw the dentist use something like a nail wrapped in some kind of sticky tape to jab my gums and pliers to pull them out…Thank God I had no sensation. That time, she was not using the rubber sheet so I could see her hands clearly and I did not have my messiah’s advise.

By the end of the session, I felt I must have spent a few decades on that chair and my left side where the jab had taken effect felt like a fat blob of quivering jelly! My whole being wobbled, shaken by the dental adventure.

That is why before the third session I was like a dish of green jello. Then under the guidance of my messiah, I found the best way to conquer fear is to laugh, to make fun of the situation, a bit like JK Rowling’s description of how to get rid of a bogart, a creature that takes the form of what you most fear. You make it look ludicrous by dressing it in funny gear and shouting out a spell that is a deviation on the word ridiculous! So, that is what you do at a dentist’s. Of course you do not shout it out loud or use a wand to wave around as they do in the movie, but you get the gist.

You sit and imagine… a bogart or Munch’s Scream with dental issues or Voldemort or Darth Vader or Jar Jar Binks on a dentist’s chair…

Now, I have conquered it all… and probably next time, not only will I be ready to battle a bogart in dentist’s garb but the real person… with my new found weapon.