Now I know what a bone scan is.
My appointment was at 8:45 this morning, and in order to ensure I arrived in time I left home at 7:00 estimating bad traffic. Perhaps due to the fact that it was Purim today, traffic was light and I arrived at 8:20. After a brief wait, they called me into a small room where a rather nice American doctor was waiting for me. He injected me with about 5cc of Technetium, a radioactive isotope into me. He explains that it has a 6hr half-life and that the sensing equipment is specifically tuned to detect it, which is how the scan works.
Now here is where I do something really stupid. A coworker who’d undergone a bone scan in the army had explained to me that it involves drinking the isotope followed by a ton of water. The doctor told me to go wander around the nearby mall for 2hrs and to drink X water. The problem is that my mind was wandering and I didn’t hear what X was. I decided that X was a lot based on what my co-worker said, so I think over those 2 hrs I probably drank about 3L of water. When I returned after 2 hrs, I heard the same doctor telling someone to drink 4 glasses of water. Oops.
I was now taken into the room with the scanning machine . It’s a rather large machine with a motorized bed nearby. Since the bed is beside the machine, I’m presented with two large parallel scanning surfaces oriented vertically, with enough room to stand in between. Sure enough, I’m told to do just that. From here, I can see the monitors. I can see a live image of myself. It’s a bit slow, imaging every ~5 seconds or so, but it’s basically live. It looks like this or this. I didn’t realize he was actually imaging now, and thought it was just a live feed while he was making additional adjustments. With this in mind, I started moving my torso a bit to watch my spine shift. It was funny at the time, until he yelled at me to stay put.
Anyway, the scan went smoothly from there. After a few standing & seated scans, I had to lie on my back with my arms above my head for about 20-30 minutes. I think I snored a bit, but at least I didn’t move.
My doctor should have the results tomorrow, and I am looking forward to hearing the news.
[tags]medical, accident, injury, israel, bonescan, spect[/tags]
