Bone Scan

I am in the middle of the bone scan procedure this morning, having been to the hospital early for the radioactive injection. I now sit, waiting, in a Starbucks just down the highway from the South Health Campus here in Calgary, so that the tracer can work its way through my body and bind to my bones. The team at the Diagnostics Imaging Clinic is terrific, helpful and good humoured, making the first part of this process quick and painless. Of course all it entailed was an injection and some baseline scans. The big deal starts at 11:45 AM.

Of course I am no fool. I can do the math. Yet no matter how hard I try, I cannot help but hope that they will suddenly discover that the medical team missed something on my early scans, MRI's and X-Rays. The time from initial diagnosis to shoulder pain was months. If there was a relationship it would have been apparent long before this. The first signs, the early symptoms, started a year and a half or more before I was diagnosed, so there is no real hope here, let alone hope based on some strange injury that happened just a matter of weeks ago. All they are really doing is trying to figure out what this constant pain in my left shoulder might be.

Yet hope continues. No matter how hard I try to dismiss it, no matter how often I tell myself I am being silly, underneath, deep inside, below my ability to control it, hope arises. I know full well my hopes will be dashed on the rocks of this disease. All of them have been smashed, as test after test proves the diagnosis, as trial treatment after trial treatment fails, as research report after research reports shows almost no progress. Hope, blinded to reality, completely uncontrolled and wanton in its malfeasance screams out from the depths of my humanity. Hope continues.

Of course I am no fool. This is not denial, this is hope. I hope for slowed progression. I hope for longer life, more meaningful time. I hope for love, companionship, caring, compassion. I hope for dignity in my final time, for safety as my end approaches. I hope for so many things in the face of this hopeless situation. Bone scan or no, I continue to hope.