health
Joyce McColl knew a PET/CT scanner would save lives, including her own | By Dr. Lenny Salzberg N
A MAP FOR HEALING
o one appreciated the need for a PET/CT scanner like Joyce McColl. As the director of Cape Fear Valley Medical Center’s radiology department, Joyce knew that the machine would literally save lives. As a cancer patient undergoing radiation therapy herself, she knew one of those lives could be her own. Joyce was diagnosed with endometrial cancer in 2006, when
there was no PET/CT (positron emission tomography/computerized tomography) scanner at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center. After a hysterectomy and radiation therapy, she thought she was cured — but she was wrong. Two years later she was extremely fatigued and her Family Physician ordered a PET/CT scan. The results were bad, there were tumors in her small and large intestines. Joyce went to Duke for surgery to remove the metastatic cancer from her intestines and to have it peeled off from around her mesenteric artery. The PET/CT scan provided a perfect roadmap
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