Sonny: I hate PET scans

Yesterday I had to have a pet scan which started off quite exciting - I got there in a cab. When we arrived we took the lifts up to Nuclear Medicine, they saw us very quickly and took us to a room with 3 beds. I had to stay in this room for the next hour and a half. I was just there while they got my contrast ready. They then came in and injected the contrast through my Hickman line, then I had to stay still for one hour while it went through my body. That was the most annoying thing I have ever had to do. The worst thing about it was that near the end your feet go so numb it starts to hurt which makes it difficult to stay still. When they said I could move again I went, you could say, crazy with wiggling. I was the equivalent of a monkey chasing a banana.

Zoe: Taxi!

Sonny left the hospital today for the first time since he arrived back on 8th September. Although exciting as it was to leave GOSH it wasn't really the family day out you'd normally look forward to as we had to go down the road to UCH for something called a PET scan in a rather alarmingly titled place called Nuclear Medicine. The journey was made more enjoyable though as the pre-arranged patient transport didn't arrive so we had to hail a black cab (quite a treat in these credit crunch times). Sonny was then bravely injected with a mixture of glucose and something from The Matrix and then had to remain absolutely still for an hour while this potion travelled round his body. He then had to lie still for another hour while they did the scans - it sounds easy but try it and see how long it is before you want to scratch your nose or twitch your foot. Sadly, no glamour on the way back either as the proper transport arrived to take us back again but Sonny did enjoy being towed up the ramp in his wheelchair.

We hope to get the results of the PET scan back tomorrow. This will enable the team here to stage his disease and decide on his treatment. It's all more than a little complicated as he has already had quite a lot of the chemotherapy they would normally give for this disease already but once they have worked out all the clever stuff he should be able to begin the correct treatment when his blood counts are back to normal early next week.