Fatal Foundation
“I and my family had moved to Denver where my husband Jeff Carter got a project to develop and build schools. Jeff would often come home in his work clothes unknowingly carrying with him the deadly asbestos fibres. Often when I would be doing the laundry, I would also wash Jeff’s work clothes, unaware that I too was passively inhaling asbestos fibers. The fatal foundation for asbestosis was laid then. Jeff died in a car accident about 5 year ago and my sons have moved out and live on their own.
The past haunts
25 years later I developed asthma, and I religiously took my medications for it. But I noticed that the medications helped me for a while but then the labored breathing pattern would come back with a vengeance. I put it to old age. Then my voice became deep-throated despite the fact that I never smoked in my life. In my mind it was only smokers who went on to have such deep voices. My body hurt all over. The doctor couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me.
To my shock and dismay my doctors disclosed that I had cancer. I was incredulous when the doctor told me. I couldn’t understand how I could get it. It was Jeff who worked all his life with asbestos and nothing happened to him. I just washed his clothes. It was then the doctor explained that asbestosis has a latency period of 30-50 years. So it is most likely that even Jeff could have developed asbestosis had he not died in a car accident. Asbestosis is also know as mesothelioma and typically occurs to those people who come in contact with asbestos dust in one way or the other. If only we had known….
First things first
The doctors told me that a needle biopsy was not enough to know that I had asbestosis. They had to scan to find out at what stage the mesothelioma had attacked my internal organs. They sent me for a PET scan, which was explained to me in minute detail by my kind doctors.
PET scan stands for Positron Emission Tomography scanning in which a camera is used to create pictures of the body’s biological functions. What happens is that the radiologist injects a compound made of sugars tagged with a signal-emitting tracer into the patient. Then a scanner records the signals this tracer gives out as it travels throughout the patient’s body and accumulates in those organs that are specified for examination.
A computer reorganizes the signals into images that reveal the quantity of sugars metabolized by cancerous areas. Since cancers react with sugars at a higher rate than normal tissues or organs, the PET scan shows where there is abnormal activity and can exactly locate the sections of active disease such as asbestosis. |
