A long day at Stanford

First Dr. Gill at 8 AM. We came with a prepared list of questions, a copy for Dr. Gill, and bless his heart, he just tackled each one down the line. That was that and we were off to radiology for a bone scan.

This is Paolo, from the Philippines. He's a teacher and technician. He injected the radioactive tracer (Technetium, who knew it was on the Periodic Table of Elements?) which circulates in the system for about 4 hours before the scan. The tracer is concentrated where there is metabolically active tissue (assume cancer) in the bone. It shows up as hot spots. Below is the machine that did that detection in about 45 mintues.

After the scan, the images were reviewed by Paolo and a radiologist Dr. Wong who asked if Jack had pain in his right hip, at the ball and socket. Sure. There's been soreness there. That called for yet another scan in yet another machine, a Spect CT--a CT scan of his hip area.

Those are Jack's arms over his head held in place by a pillow case.

By now it was 4:00. We went to the film library to pick up a CD of the images. We don't have the software to view the first set of pictures. The second set means nothing to our untrained eyes. We have to wait till Friday to get the results from Dr. Gill.

The Stanford cafeteria has gone green. All the take-out containers, drink cups, and utensils are made of recyclable materials. Utensils are of corn "plastic" and even the straws are now thin, shiny, cardboard tubes. I liked the straws very much--not so sharp in the mouth.