Getting my PET scan at the VA hospital was a bit of an adventure, the place is new and huge and I had to park in the mud. When I finally found my way to the Nuclear Medicine department, I was taken into a small room and put into the injection chair. Not the electric chair! After asking me a bunch of questions, a technical assistant brought in a lead container with a lead syringe inside it and they proceeded to inject me. Once the radioactive substance entered my system I was not allowed to talk, for the substance has a glucose tag on it that attaches itself to glucose intensive spots such as saliva in the mouth. They wanted the radioactive material to spread throughout my body, so I shut up as I watched the doctor push the radioactive liquid into the needle in my arm. Then, after waiting 30 minutes of allowing my body to become a radioactive sponge, I followed the doctor to the PET room. The doctor put pillows on the PET machine for my head and legs, then I lay down as the doctor wrapped me in blankets. She turned on some music and we began the first of two long 40 minute plus scans. It was very comfortable, kind of like resting at a health spa.

After several hours I was done, or so I thought. The doctor requested that I be a part of their study where they would scan me with their gamma camera, while I was still radioactive. You see, the gamma camera is a $200,000 piece of equipment, and most hospitals already have one, but the PET scan machine costs $2,000,000, and very few hospitals can afford to own one. So their little study would determine if they can get the same PET scan results from the gamma camera as they can from the PET machine. So once again, like getting my genes tested, I was a part of medical science. Somebody has got to be the guniea pig for the future, just like so many previous people did so that I could have the treatment that saved my life. It was the least I could do.

Next on my medical agenda is a consultation with Dr. Stephanie Jeffreys about getting a prophylactic mastectomy, and yesterday I got a diagnostic mammogram upon her request. She is the head of Stanford's Breast Surgery department, plus she was recommended to me by several sources as the best breast surgeon in town. I should be meeting with her in a week or so, and I plan to make my final decision on whether to go ahead with the procedure after speaking with her. It really is not that big a deal for me to have this done, in fact it will make me feel sort of bionic and invincible. I rather enjoy feeling safe, I need to in order to begin a new job and life without a humungous cloud hanging over me. I am taking charge of my future!

January 10, 1997
It is a new year and I feel absolutely great! I have to think back really hard to make sure that I was the person who was once so overcome with Hodgkin's, and if it were not for a few scars, I would have thought it had just been a movie I once saw. So my life goes on! I am just now starting to look for a job as a Web Designer in the Silicon Valley area, and I welcome all leads! I want to be out there in the real world again, and I know that there is a perfect job out there for me. I will only take a job that I will love doing, because there just is not time in this world to use energy on anything less. And energy is just what I have now! Lots of it! Where is that job?

Back to the medical world for just a moment, I passed my 10 month check up A-OK, and I have a PET scan scheduled for next Friday. It is supposed to be an ultra sensitive piece of equipment, and I certainly would not give up the opportunity to be scanned in another manner. It takes several hours to do, and I won't get the results until the following Tuesday. Nobody seems concerned about it, they just want to see my insides at every angle. It is good to get these things out of the way before I start a new job.

Once again I must give a hair report, for I recently got a new haircut. I decided that I did not need to grow and grow my hair out of some strange feeling that hair equalled health, so I went to my hairdresser and told him to make it look good on my face in a modern way. So he shagged it all over and still kept the length. I love it, especially since I can mess it up and it still looks decent. Growing my hair is not a big deal anymore! I am feeling way too normal!

Today I go to a showing of "Tell Then You're Fine" at Stanford, which is the documentary that I was in during my treatment. So you see, my Hodgkin's really was a movie I once saw.