Dr. Curti has a pattern of saying “your scans are good” as he opens the office door – unless they aren’t. I know that something is off when he walks in with, “Hello how are you?” and his characteristic handshake.
The PET scan of October 9th requires discussion. He starts from the top and works down as we view the PET scan on the exam room computer screen.
• Brain, OK
• Head, OK
• Neck, OK
• Lungs, OK
• Chest lymph: stable (tumor neither growing nor shrinking)
• Liver and kidneys: OK
• Stomach and bladder: OK
We arrive at a new hot spot in the muscle in my left hip near my spine. I see the area glows with a reddish blob of color, very close to the light grey spine. Dr. Curti is saying that this could be a strained, stretched, or injured muscle; we can’t be sure from this test. While it is uncommon to find melanoma in muscle, it is best to respect the enemy.
“Have you been having lower back pains?” he asks.
“Yes, I frequently have pains in my back, mostly upper, and sometimes lower. I don’t recall noticing a lot of unusual pain in that area,” I say.
Dr. Curti emphasizes we should follow up with testing to see what’s there. We schedule an MRI in seven weeks – long enough for the area to heal by itself if it will – short enough to waste little time if there is pathology. Should the MRI reveal a continuing problem, a biopsy will follow, and more treatments are available, if needed.
I appreciate Dr. Curti’s conservative approach and I want to cooperate. But, I really think the hot spot is a muscle strain caused by that leg-in-the-air-back-bend yoga pose of last Thursday’s yoga class.
Researching the PET and exercise, Eddy found that Science Daily reported a study where 13% of 1,100 PET scans produced false positives related to prior muscle activity before the scan. I am convinced that even light exercise 48 hours before PET is a poor choice because it can lead to false positive results.