PET Scan is NOT for Claustrophobes Unless...

In My Humble Opinion
1

…you’re sedated

A PET Scan - at least the one I had today (which is my very first) - is like a CT, only much, much slower.

First the techie showed me the PET Scan machine, and explained that it would take about 20 minutes. One look at the machine and I knew I’d need medication to survive. Ah but I found I had to have gotten the stuff from my primary care MD.

“Well, maybe I can put up with this shit,” I thought.

So he put me in a room to lie down for an hour, during which time I wasn’t allowed to read, even. For very goods reasons, I suppose, they want the patient to be very calm, very laid back. Hell, I wasn’t supposed to exercise 24 hours before the scan!!

Anyway before I nodded off (hah!), another techie injected me with a radioactive substance which for diagnostic purposes, causes some of my tissues to glow during the scan.

After that I lay back and tried unsuccessfully to snooze. About an hour later, the techie came in and put me on the machine’s roll-in-roll-out cot.

He went into his office and hit a button that rolled me into and out of the machine, partly, I suppose, to get me used to the idea.

After that, I lay there waiting for I don’t know for how long, then found myself rolling through the “doughnut” (like a CT scan) to the far end of the machine with my head and chest outside of it.

Five or ten minutes later I rolled in a bit and stopped and got scanned. (I didn’t ever course through the machine continuously. It was more like fits and starts.) The machine scans that segment of the body so I lay still. This move, stop, scan continued and continued and continued, until my head was totally enclosed in the doughnut.

At some point I began to panic. So, I shut my eyes and intensified my Hail Mary recitals, listening desperately to my own voice whispering the prayers to help drown out the “I’m being buried alive!!” syndrome.

But there was one point when I thought I just couldn’t take it any longer. Without moving I yelled, “Help! HELP!” There was no response, so I reached down somewhere inside of me for strength, and to my utter surprise, found it. I shut my eyes, continued to pray nonstop, and eventually emerged from the machine.

It seemed a hell of a lot longer than 20 minutes.

The techie checked the pictures and they were fine, and I went to join my wife who was baby sitting the grandkids at our daughter’s house. I was exhilarated to have gotten through the scan alive and sane.

There’s a Moral to the Story: Have your primary care write a prescription to get you through a PET Scan.

I had an MRI at this same hospital and the hospital provided the necessary sedation. It was a huge help that enabled me to waltz through that procedure.

Oh. If you’re being sedated, work it out with the PET Scan people as to when to take it. And if you do get sedated, you might need to have someone along to drive you home. Hospitals can be very insistent on things like that.

2

Fine as in “they’re readable” or fine as in “they didn’t find anything wrong”? Here’s hoping it’s the latter.

And thanks for the advice. I fear this test more than any other procedure I can think of. I don’t even like sticking my head in a closet to look for shoes.

3

Bummer.

Best work out sedation arrangements with the doc who’s ordering the test on you in the first place. Techies aren’t licensed to prescribe such meds, and hitting up a passing doc at the facility for a controlled substance scrip on a patient unknown to the doc is not a sure-fire scenario.

Me, I love my time in the MRI. I am relieved of pager and cell phone and am unreachable by my staff during that period. Zone-out time!!

4

If it was the techie running scan, I’m sure it was fine as in “They’re readable and we don’t have to make you do the whole thing again.”

BarnOwl, you’ve got more inner strength than I do! Glad you got through it.

Seems like you could ask for a blindfold! You know, like leading a horse out of a burning barn? When I got cortisone shots in my heels, I told the podiatrist, “I don’t ever want to see a needle. Before you start getting things out, tell me, and I’ll close my eyes.” I got along just fine.

I think I’d not even want to see the PET machine. Ignorance is bliss.

5

It’s the former. I’ll get the word later this week.

6

Good for you, BarnOwl! You lasted a hell of a lot longer than I did when I had (read: tried to have) an MRI. I tried praying, too, but couldn’t get a grip on the rising panic, and slid out of the machine after about two minutes of terror. Should I ever need an MRI in a closed machine again, I’d better be unconscious first.

Did they ask you if you were claustrophobic before the scan? (I was only asked if I got uncomfortable in elevators. I said no, because in an elevator you are standing, you can walk around, and you get out after 30 seconds. How this question is supposed to screen for claustrophobia while lying in a coffin-sized tube for 45 minutes is a mystery.)

7

Same thing happened to me. The funny thing is, I never exhibited any symptom of claustrophobia before then. When I was young, my friends and I had an underground fort that was only accessible through a kid-sized tunnel, and I had no problem with that.

8

At the risk of a hijack, weren’t your parents worried about cave-ins? Or am I imagining something else?

9

Not for the PET, but it did come up when I was scheduling the MRI. I got medicated for the MRI. Unquestionably, I would not have lasted without it.

I hope you went back for your MRI.

10

BTW gallows fodder, if you do get properly medicated I can almost guarantee you’ll survive the MRI next time.

I am a total claustrophobe and when I went into that MRI coffin, I didn’t give a rat’s ass.

11

Actually, I never did – I got a second opinion from another doctor, who deemed it unnecessary.

My father had an MRI this weekend, and he said he nearly fell asleep in the machine. Unfathomable!

ETA: Good to know that sedation works, though, should I ever have to go through with it!

12

What part of “close your eyes” doesn’t work for you folks?

With your eyes closed the inside of a CT / MRI / PET scanner looks exactly like the inside of your cozy bedroom which looks exactly like napping in the center of a prairie under the stars.

If you’re afraid of the machine breaking in two & collapsing on you & crushing you, consider how well it’d shield you if the building collapsed on it. I assume you aren’t afraid to enter buildings, but if any of them chose to collapse with you inside, you’d be squashed for sure.

I’m not trying to be a jerk, I just cannot comprehend being upset about having a panel 5 feet across someplace near my face. Can somebody enlighten me?

13

Hey, I know it’s not rational, but I can’t reason the fear away. This probably doesn’t make any sense to someone who’s not claustrophobic, just like my best friend’s intense fear of heights doesn’t make any sense to me.

I know I’m not big enough to get stuck in the machine, but every sensation is signaling to my lizard brain that I am going to be trapped in there, and panic kicks in despite every effort to calm myself down, distract myself, think of something else, etc.

Closing my eyes was part of the problem. I was also wearing simple ear plugs (the kind swimmers wear), and not being able to hear properly, shutting my eyes and not seeing, breathing in close air, feeling the walls of the tube pressing on the sides of my arms…these all contributed to the feeling that I was being compressed within myself and would suffocate. I lay there and told myself to calm down, tried reciting prayers to myself to distract myself, tried steadying my breathing, but with each passing second, my heart beat faster and faster, and I felt more and more panicky. I wasn’t given a stop button, and the technician was in the other room, so when I reached the point where I knew I wasn’t going to be able to handle this, I slid right out of the machine to stop the procedure. When the technician came running in, I was shaking and had to sit down. He said we could wait a few minutes and try again, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to get back in there without being knocked out first. For at least a couple of weeks after that, every time I would think about the MRI, I would get a surge of panic again – once I even jumped out of my chair.

I wasn’t claustrophobic before this – for example, when I was kid, I used to take a book and flashlight and read under my bed for fun all the time. That MRI did it.

I was really ashamed of myself for a while afterwards, but now I figure that one is not going to be able to handle everything in life with perfect ease, and this is just one of the few things I can’t handle.

14

Fear isn’t rational, nor is it predictable. I discovered I was claustrophobic when I went caving for the first time and had to crawl on my belly in a pitch-black tunnel for what seemed like forever.

I can’t comprehend being terrified by dogs or cats or birds, but I know people who are.

15

Since they didn’t, technically, know, they didn’t worry. I found this worked out best for all involved.

16

I had the worst panic reaction on having an MRI over eight years ago now, and I still have bad dreams about it.

I only got my head and shoulders in before I was screaming, and the technician could not get me out fast enough, so I kicked him.

I had NO IDEA that this was going to happen, and though I was in tears with sweat streaming down me, unable to stand, I was SO ashamed of myself. I apologised profusely to the tech, who was kindness itself, telling me that some people just react like that. When I had calmed down somewhat I said I’d try again, but he said that it would happen again, and not to worry about it.

When I went back to the doctor’s office, he laughed at me openly. Bastard.

I ended up having a CAT scan as the problem was on my neck and I thought I might be able to cope with that. I did, but by the skin of my teeth.

Since then I have been unable to cope with any kind of small space at all, and cannot even shut my (small) bedroom door…

I still feel stupid about it but dread the day when I’ll be made to have another one.

17

I have always been a claustrophobe and know I would need sedation to get through what you describe.

My dentist died two years ago and I finally just made an appointment with a new one. I have no fear of DENTISTRY itself, but being essentially immobilized in a dentist’s chair with someone hovering over/handling my face wigs me out in ways I can’t even explain. The idea alone makes me have to fight back tears. I had to explain this to the new dentist’s receptionist, who was a bit surprised, but was thankfully quite sympathetic. Even so, I am dreading this.

18

I had a lengthy MRI, including the whole head in a cage thing, for some neurological symptoms I was having. I freaked out when I first went in the “tunnel” and got the guy to pull me straight out. He told me if I wanted sedation I could book for one week later. I figured that a one week delay would just let me intensify my anxiety so I told him to put me back in.

I closed my eyes and really concentrated on what was going on - the wind blowing through the tunnel, the awesome noises that the magnets made whirring around. I tried to work out ways to mentally make music out of it and came pretty close.

19

Thanks for the patient enlightenment after what must have seemed a moderately snarky request on my part.

20

Hokkaido Brit, LifeOnWry, and don’t ask, please repeat after me:

If I ever need an MRI, CT or PET Scan, I will be be medicated and the procedure will turn out to be totally uneventful.

It’s true. Have faith. Put the terror aside.