Quincy has been having back and knee pain for several months. There have been no obvious answers at this point and, after having gone down to Portland to see a rheumatologist, he had to have a bone scan. Fortunately, we could do that at St. Joseph’s Hospital (Dara’s employer) here in Bangor. Bone scans fall under the auspices of Nuclear Medicine. I liked the sound of that.
So, today was the day for that. I tweeted a bunch of things earlier, which you can read on the home page if you are so inclined. Basically, they inject a small amount of a radioactive isotope – which only has a half-life of 6 hours – and then they use a giant scanner to detect the gamma particles. The picture with this post is the exact scanner that was used. The test was a piece of cake for Quincy. One needle prick and then just lying still as the machine hovered all around him. Having had an MRI before, I would have much preferred this, as the machine was virtually silent. The technician was great with Quincy and he kept referring to his test as the “fun bone scan” test.
His first test was at 10am and then later at 1pm. The afternoon tests were long since they wanted additional views. Not sure what this will show, but I’d bet nothing. Just my gut feeling.