A New Experience

Today is another day at Stanford in the Cancer Center. Mary is having a PET Scan of her abdomen to help the radiologists determine where and how much radiation to hit her with. Stanford's PET Scan itself takes several hours--the technician estimated 3 to 4 hours. Mary must be dying of hunger, she was not allowed to eat or drink prior to the beginning of this procedure at 9AM. At some time during the procedure, they will also make a body mold of her back so she can rest comfortably and totally still for the eventual radiation treatments.

There is a small snack shop in the Cancer Center with tables in the lobby for eating, waiting, or like me, using the wireless system. So far, I have said hello to Dr. Fisher and Dr. Visser (there is a limerick in there somewhere, I can feel it coming on), the Oncologist and Surgeon respectfully. Seems this is their latte station and I am camped out at the front door.

As I wrote on Monday, we still need to schedule the high resolution CT scan per the order of the Oncologist, Dr. Fisher. They have not called yet so I suppose we need to bug them today. Typically, an order gets processed within 24 hours so Wednesday is a bit long. Given the recommendation for Mary's next steps in treatment are dependent on those results, we are anxious to get that test done so we can set a plan.

The snack shop faces a door labeled "Staff Area" from which a Ramble of Residents appeared being lead by a senior person in a white lab coat. July 1st is rumored to be day 1 for this year's crop and that would make sense. They stopped while the senior person was pointing in different directions explaining the layout of the facilities and, in particular, the snack shop behind me. It's kinda obvious, facing the staff area door, with window displays of food and drinks proudly displayed and the label on the door stating "STANFORD CAFE" but maybe that is ambiguous? Newbies are newbies the world over, eh?

Anyway, its a good thing this is a shutdown week. Its too bad we couldn't get the CT Scan done too so we don't have to make arrangements for next week. We may have to call upon our corp of volunteer drivers--Marge, Ingrid, Terry and Mary. We'll know more once the appointment is confirmed.