Testing time

I spent a large chunk of yesterday at University Hospital Lewisham having a bone scan. Sue came with me to keep me company … and to drive me home afterwards if I felt unwell afterwards. My appointment was for 9.30am, and thanks to the heavy traffic on the South Circular Road, it took us over an hour to drive the four miles from home to the hospital. Luckily, we had left enough time to allow for holdups, and I was in the Nuclear Medicine Department just before 9.30am.

I was intravenously injected with a small quantity of radioactive material … and then told to come back at midday for my scan. This was to allow time for the blood to circulate the radioactive material around my body, particularly my skeleton.

As Sue and I had not eaten breakfast before leaving home, we made our way to the hospital’s coffee shop, where we each had a bacon roll and a café latte. This took until just after 10.00am, and as the weather was quite pleasant, Sue and I went out of the hospital’s rear entrance, which led us into Ladywell Fields. This is a large open space that is bordered on one side by the main line railway from London to Hayes, Kent, and on the other by the River Ravensbourne. Besides areas of grass where people can walk their dogs and children can play ball games, there are a number of tennis courts, a children’s playground, an athletics track, and a small cafe.

Sue and I wandered around the park until 11.30am, at which point we returned to the hospital’s main entrance. As we still had about twenty minutes until I was due to have my scan, we went across the road to have a look at the local war memorial.

Next to the main memorial was a smaller memorial to those local men who won the Victoria Cross, and each of them was further commemorated by an individual paving slab.

I was back at the Nuclear Medicine Department by midday, and my scan took just under an hour. I then went out to the car park, where I had arranged to meet Sue. She had used the time I had been having my scan to have a walk around the local area, and after searching the graveyard of the nearby Church of St Mary the Virgin, she had discovered a short row of local shops. Amongst them was a proper bakery, and rather than go straight home, Sue suggested that we might go there to buy something for lunch. We did ... and each of us bought one of their home-made Cornish Pasties as well as a cake, which we took home to eat.

I expect to hear the results of my scan in about a week’s time. In the meantime, I am still undergoing hormone treatment that is supposed to stop the cancer growing any further.