Positrons and Positives

I went for my PET scan today. 

[Pause while Margaret pulls her glasses down her nose and continues in her best teacher voice]

PET stands for Positron Emission Tomography, which means they injected me with radioactive glucose so I personally was emitting positrons from wherever that glucose (well, I think it was actually a glucose analog) went, and by measuring those emissions they make lots of cross-sectional images of me to create a 3d one.  For the glucose to get only to the proper, active, high-metabolism (i.e. cancer) cells, I had to lay in a recliner very still, doing nothing, and not being anxious, so the glucose wouldn't go to the muscles that were working or the brain cells that were worrying.  In other words, forced relaxation for a good forty-five minutes, after which I had to lay on the narrow bed that slid in and out and through the PET scanner tube with my arms way up over my head for another twenty minutes, again being very still and non-anxious.  The worst part was my shoulders starting to hurt after about 5 minutes in the tube, and let me tell you - after cancer and chemo and crap, sore shoulders are like a sunny day at the beach. 

It also struck me as bizarre that my job was primarily to relax.  I guess I am told to relax all the time by medical folks, but usually it's to keep my veins from contracting, or because there's nothing else to do while on the poison drip, or to make whatever little shot or exam easier.  Here, relaxing was vital to getting a clear and accurate scan.  So today I was particularly glad I'm not squeamish around needles or at this point very emotional about my cancer. 

The idea of forcing myself to relax brings to mind another phenomenon, which is that of the required positive attitude.  First, I think that overall, I've managed what could easily pass as a "positive attitude" through most of this crud.  I certainly haven't pulled the worst cards out of the cancer deck, and I have a large, strong, and loving community of friends and family who make my life logistically, financially, and emotionally comfortable, making it often effortless to keep a smile on my face.  (Thanks, guys!) 

BUT, it's unhealthy to expect a cancer patient to be happy and optimistic all the time.  It's okay to be sad, it's important to cry, and the people closest to me give me the space to have my emotions honestly.  But not everyone is so enlightened, and to claim that sustained cheerfulness alone will heal your body can cause more repressed anxiety and frustration than allowing them their natural space and expression.  These seem like obvious truisms, and yet I often am encouraged - by hospital nurses, strangers, and even fellow chemo patients (you get all kinds in there!) - to have a "positive attitude," even to the point of making declarations that I certainly can't know to be true and have no control over. 

Like today, I was chastised for putting "probably" or "hopefully" in a sentence about a timeline for getting rid of all the cancer, as if one little adverb revealed a latent negative mindset.  Not only do I do a pretty darn good job of keeping a cheerful face on the whole matter most of the time (again, it's because I feel pretty cheerful most of the time), but I was merely taking care to speak as accurately as possible given my minimal knowledge of what my life will be like in two weeks.  The encounter was irritating to me, and would have been downright disheartening if I didn't have such an arrogantly confident conviction that I am an emotionally healthy and generally positive person.  In other words, I promptly dismissed the suggestion to speak with undiluted assurance about the future, as simply wrong.

Now it is my bedtime.  I am hoping for pictures tomorrow, aren't you?  Perhaps an update on the growing/shrinking Jesus.  Or maybe the Very Last Eyelash.  Or maybe a shot of my newly decorated walls, though that would require decorating them first, which could be time-consuming.