Yesterday I received a call from Dr. Andrea Apolo, who specializes in bladder cancer research for the National Cancer Institute at the National Institute for Health. She has been following my case since April 2012, when I met her at a BCAN conference. She told me that NIH just obtained a new toy - a highly specialized combined PET-MRI scanner. In the past couple of years, researchers have been theorizing that such a combined imaging device would improve doctor's abilities to locate distant metastatic nodes or small tumors. An 2013 article in Current Radiology Reports discusses possible applications in clinical imaging for a PET/MRI scanner. A September 5, 2013 article in Medscape concludes that the new PET/MRI scanner may enhance cancer diagnosis.
Now that NIH has acquired this machine, they are looking for patients with distant metastatic nodes who have had prior CT scans to be tested with the new scanner. NIH wants to evaluate and calibrate the scanner before using it in clinical trials. Dr. Apolo said that she immediately thought of me, and asked if I would be willing to be one of the first people to be scanned. I told her that was fine, and she said that her research nurse would call me to set it up in the next week or so.
Having this scan means that the CT/PET scan that I was going to have in mid-October probably won't happen. I'm not sure whether there will be a series of scans over the next few months with the PET-MRI scanner, or if I'll go back to regular CT scans, or what. I figure I'll find that out when I show up. This means that I won't be going to GW next week to have my port cleaned, since NIH will take care of that when I'm being injected with whatever radioactive isotopes this new machine needs to light up my cancer cells.
As far as risks, they appear to be minimal - other subjects have reported having a glowing personality after the scan, while others have been treated as radioactive by their friends and family. Since I've already passed both of those milestones, I figure there's little downside.
