April 15, 2005 - What's a Muga Scan?

Don't know what it is, but I found out today. It's one of the test my oncologist ordered before having chemo done, but due to scheduling I couldn't get it done till after. It's supposed to be a very important test for checking my heart and surrounding tissue as chemo drugs can be very damaging to the heart tissue. So I went in for this Muga Scan. This was a fun test (NOT!). I had to be injected with 2 different types of nuclear medicine (no it didn’t make me glow!) 20 minutes apart, which had to be injected into my vein and they could not use my port. Since I have such horrible veins they decided to start an IV. Lucky me. The tech tried twice. No luck. She went and got help. He had to use an ultrasound machine to find my vein. Every since my mastectomy I am limited to only left arm for blood draws and pressure because I do not have lymph nodes in my right side. I cannot risk having someone stick my right arm and getting an infection. So I have 1 arm and only so many veins. Once he got the IV in and we got the meds in, I had to lie still on this machine for 10 minutes while it scanned my heart. The purpose was to make sure that my heart and the surrounding tissue are both capable of withstanding the effects of the chemotherapy. My results came back exactly as it should. It's good to know I at least have a good ticker!