Wednesday, December 8, 2010

12/7/2010 Bone Scan Day

Well Pearl Harbor day was a long day for us this year. 

We were scheduled for a Bone Scan and CT Scan with biopsy on December 30th.  They went ahead and moved the bone scan to the 7th.  I tried to get them to do both but they could not get them both on the same day. 

If anyone is not familiar with a bone, I am just copying and pasting an explanation I found on another website :
A bone scan is a nuclear scanning test that identifies new areas of bone growth or breakdown. It can be done to evaluate damage to the bones, find cancer that has spread (metastasized) to the bones, and monitor conditions that can affect the bones (including infection and trauma). A bone scan can often find a problem days to months earlier than a regular X-ray test.
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. This process may take several hours. 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 problems such as arthritis, the presence of a tumor, a fracture, or an infection.
A bone scan may be done on the entire body or just a part of it.

What we were lookign for specifically is any lesions that may be occuring on his bones that are associated woth Langerhans Cell Histcytosis.  I would go into more detail as to what that is, however we still do not know what he has, and I do not want anyone to think we have a diagnosis.  This is just a possiblity we are testing for.

So we first had to check in and head to the basement of Texas Children's.  They did not do the first IV correctly, so they had to re-stick him, and he was screaming bloody murder.  Poor Baby.  We then had to wait for the radioactive injection to circulate through out his body, and we waited and waited and waited.  Finally they called us in and sedated him for the test.  The whole test took about an hour, as it was a full body test.

When the procedure was finally complete and he he was monitored in recovery they let us go home.  This was at 4:50pm, so we then had the joy of rush hour traffic.  We finally made it home after this long long day and I was nice enough to then close the car door on little Cooper's fingers.  Luckily, ther ewas no severe damage, just some squished fingers. 

Today he woke up in a great mood and crawled in bed with me.  He is happy and active.

Our week is not over.  The doctors believe Cooper is behind in his speech and laguage, so we go to speech therapy on Thursday to assess is abilities and determine if there is a physical problem as to why he may be behind.  On Friday we will be seeing the hemotologist.  I suspect we will hear the results of the bone scan any day, howver, if we do not, I know the hemotologist will be able to tell us whether they saw anything or not.

So that's where we are at today.  Who knows where we will be tomorrow :)

XOXO,
Summer and Cooper

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