A Long Strange Trip -- Is This My Exit?

So at the start of this LST, I stopped into an Emergency Room to check on a sharp pain in my chest. (Which was never really explained, but that's all right since it hasn't re-occurred.) And I get diagnosed with pneumonia. (Which I still don't totally believe, but I've stopped coughing, so that's all right too.) But the spot on my lungs that showed up on a CT scan kept this trip going. It wasn't all right...

So now on the next leg of the trip (and maybe the last one?), Deb and I have just come home from the PET scan facility with a CD copy of the scan results firmly in hand -- a scan of my lungs and everything else. A CD I hope to present to my radiation doc late next week for analysis. So that's as right as it can be at the moment.

If the scan proves to be negative, then I will feel comfortable in declaring this Long, Strange Trip -- that started driving home to West Chester from visiting my Dad in Baltimore over three weeks ago -- declaring that trip to be over.

A few recollections from today:

The scan itself:
The PET scan technician was great. A very upbeat, positive young man with a handful of useful euphemisms. Step one in the process of PET scanning is injecting a radioactive substance into the patient's arm and waiting for an hour or so until the solution travels throughout the body. Now he might have told me: "I'm going to inject you with a substance so dangerous that it gets delivered to the office and stored in a heavy lead container. It will react with cells throughout your anatomy, producing matter / anti-matter particles that will, in turn annihilate each other in a microburst of energy." Because that's what will happen. In fact, he told me, "I'm going to inject some sugar solution into your arm, then we wait until it circulates everywhere." Because that's what will happen.

And he might have told me: "Then we're going to strap you down to an uncomfortable table and run your body through a huge, ominous-looking plastic doughnut that is likely bring up any feelings of claustrophobia you've ever had. And the doughnut will catch the radiation particles as they are emitted from your body." But instead, he told me: "Then we're going to place you on the bed of the camera."

Pretty cool, eh?

(In fact, I've now become pretty much inured to getting scanned in giant plastic doughnuts, and have fallen asleep in the middle of the scan. In the middle of the doughnut. Truth.)

Breakfast at 11:30:
I was not supposed to eat anything after midnight before the scan, so by 11:30 or so, I was quite peckish. And there was a really nice diner (run by a Greek family, of course) close to the scan center. So Deb and I stopped for a bite. Actually quite a lot of bites... Great food, good service, and really nice coffee.

And one of the things that made the stop all the more special was the coffee mugs, which were quite heavy (as in sturdy) with the intriguing shape shown in the photo attached. Now, the shape of the mug won't mean anything to any of you -- until you read the name of the diner. And then it will only mean something to the folks here in the lower right-hand corner of Pennsylvania.

So let me fill in the rest of you. The restaurant is located in the town of Limerick. And the most notable feature in the town is the two gigantic cooling towers of the nuclear power plant which happens to be located in the town. And the shape of the coffee mugs (the gentle curve inwards on the lower half matched by a gentle curve outwards) closely mimics the shape of said cooling towers.

We did not ask the owner of the restaurant if the mugs were chosen for their similarity in shape to the key feature of the town's largest employer. We'd rather just keep the mystery going... (But we did buy a pair of the mugs. Kind of a memento.)

How I feel now:
I had not consciously felt any anxiety leading up to today's scan. As in, the scan will show what the scan will show and worrying about it is the worst thing I can possibly do.

I did, however, suggest to Deb that we have wine with dinner the last three nights in a row. Which is unusual for us... And I did finish my wine before she did, which is also unusual. So I guess there was some subliminal anxiety I wasn't aware of.

But!! On the drive home, I felt somehow ever-so-much lighter -- as if the seat belt in the car was holding me in place. That I might float away if I wasn't wearing it.

Which was a not-so-subtle reminder that what we tell ourselves is not always the total truth.

And I'm telling myself that I'm not really that anxious about the result. And I almost believe it.