PET

After Sesame Street yesterday, Avery told me she wants a dog. Mommy has wanted a dog for years, but apparently I'm not ready for that kind of responsibility, yet. At the bare minimum we need a fence first. . . .

But, actually, that's a whole different story. The PET I was going to talk about here is Jordan's PET Scan in Detroit on the 4th.

PET stands for Positron Emission Tomography. It's a technology that combines the fields of medicine, computer science, chemistry, physics, and physiology to study the function of organs such as the heart, brain, and bone. In PET, a very small quantity of substances (trace) which are used by the body, such as sugar, are made radioactive and administered into your blood stream. Highly sensitive PET scanners detect the location of the radioactive tracers, allowing the physician to identify normal and abnormal function. [The radiotracers remain in the body for only short periods of time and have no known side effects.]

Hopefully this procedure will give us an idea of what parts of her brain are functioning. We know from x-rays and MRIs what parts are there, and what condition they are in (good, except minor cerebral atrophy -- no tumors, deformities, or missing parts). It's the logical next step.