A Day at the PET Scan

From Endgame Viable

March 19, 2026

About this episode

The episode discusses the personal experience of undergoing a PET scan and the emotional impact of cancer diagnoses.

I wanted to try to write more random stories about having cancer. Cancer sufferers are a bit of a secret society in my experience, and I feel like it should be more publicized and normalized, so maybe in the future it will be slightly less terrifying if it ever happens to someone. (Statistically, I think I read somewhere that around 40% of people will get a cancer diagnosis at some point in their life, so it’s nowhere near as rare as I previously thought.) PET scans are scary to contemplate because they essentially light up wherever you have cancer “ mets .” The silent worry being that the scan might reveal additional cancer in your body that you and the doctors didn’t know about before. This is my second PET scan. My first one last June revealed that my lung cancer had spread beyond the lung and brain to a handful of small bone spots.. a couple of vertebrae and some in the hip area. But it didn’t show anything in, say, the liver or pancreas or any other vital organs. So it was a bummer about the bones, but it could have been a lot worse. Before that scan I had no idea how much cancer was actually in me, and the results felt like it would determine…

Topics covered

  • cancer
  • PET scan
  • health
  • personal story

Keywords

  • cancer diagnosis
  • lung cancer
  • metastasis
  • medical imaging

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Zofran, Jawas

Books & works: Star Wars

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