May 21, 07. Radioactive and Color Dye

Sentinel nodes, which were discovered around 1996, are the first node in a string of lymph glands and if the sentinel is not affected with cancer cells, neither are the nodes behind it. In order to identify which node is the sentinel, a combination of radioactive dye and color dye is injected into the armpit in order to isolate the sentinel from the rest of the nodes.

The next day, I went to Hillel Yaffe hospital in Hadera to be injected with the dye. Sigal led me into the room where Dr Itamar Ashkenazi proceeded to explain that he would be injecting me four times, each time for about 10 seconds and that I might feel some pressure as the substance coursed into my body. He also warned me to not get up too quickly from the table where I was lying to avoid banging my head on the cupboard nailed to the wall above me. Pondering on where they could relocate the table in the small room so that the cupboard wouldn’t constitute a danger kept my mind off the injections, which were bearable – unpleasant, but bearable. I considered asking why they didn’t just move the bed or the cupboard but I didn’t really care that much.

The next step was to X-ray my armpit to make sure the dyes were doing their job. I stood in front of a machine with my shoulders awkwardly pressed against a sheet of paper, the kind that cheap toilet paper is made from. I stood there for so long with no-one shouting instructions, I wondered if I’d been forgotten. After what seemed like an age, my armpit was X-rayed from various angles and then I was told me to wait outside.

I still had to talk to the anesthetist so Nachum and I went up to the ward. We’d been there about an hour when I got a message from the X-ray unit that they’d set up the machinery for some more pictures only to discover I’d disappeared. They took their pictures then told me I was done. Apparently, because the lump had been so close to the armpit, it was difficult to isolate the sentinel. Sigal and Itamar assured me that the newly injected dye, which was creating a lot of noise in the area, would dissipate in time for the operation, scheduled for 8.00 the next morning. Itamar warned me that my urine would be blue.