SPECT
November 4th, 2004, 7am, Kota woke up on the hospital’s bed. Breakfast was delivered at 8am. He had each small amount of cereal, bacon, scrambled egg, milk, and drinkable jelly. He still had pain when he touched around the wound by catheter, so we asked for Tylenol. Then he did some practice of walking on the floor and was discharged from the hospital. Because the room was on the 3rd floor, we used a wheelchair to go down to the exit.
SPECT exam was scheduled today and tomorrow. SPECT stands for Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography, which is a kind of CT. An imaging agent with radio isotope is injected into a vein. After the agent is delivered to the site (this case is brain), the radiation emitted is measured to see the blood flow in the tissue. It takes two days because the exam is done with and without Diamox (vasodilator). If my understanding is correct, the blood flow should increase by the vasodilator in normal cases. Whereas if the blood flow was decreased from the beginning like MM patients, there would be no change because peripheral blood vessels are already dilated to compensate the decreased blood flow.
The angiogram was carried out at the Children’s Hospital yesterday, and today’s SPECT is done at the Stanford Hospital. Although those two are connected each other, the distance is sort of long because these are big buildings. So we got out from Children’s to move to Stanford’s parking lot. However, it turned out that Nuclear Med Department was on the near side to the Children’s. It could have been faster to move inside the building. Anyway, we checked in there at 9:30 am, though appointment was 10am. It looked a little busy on that day, and we had to wait until 10:30 before we were called. The first injection was at 11:10, and the second was 11:30. The scan started at 12:15, which lasted about 25 minutes. I was attending Kota, and happened to find that the SPECT was operated by Macintosh 8100/110!!! Isn’t this about 10 years old model? Man, 110MHz Power PC! Or inside might be upgraded. Anyway, I was a little surprised to see such a machine was used for the operation and monitoring of such high-tech machines.
The exam finished at 12:40, and we were released. I thought Kota must be hungry, but he said he had no appetite at that moment. So we went home. Then I went to work.
The next day, Friday, November 5th, we had an appointment at 9:30. Arriving at 9:15 followed by the registration, we were called almost on time to go to the waiting room. After an injection, scanning started at 11:00 and finished at 11:20.