Thanks to my misadventures withy esophageal dilation, I have had chest xrays out the wazoo in the last few weeks as well as THREE barium swallow studies in two weeks.

Now that I'm home, I am dealing with something that turned up on a CT taken during cancer staging a year and 1/2 ago--two huge kidney stones in my right ureter (but no impaired kidney function as measured by two kinds of tests and no other symptoms. none. since then) and my primary care doc pushed me to go to a urologist who wants to do a spiral CT of teh right kidney and ureter to be sure there isn't kidney damage and see what state everyhting is in a year and 1/2 after these turned up on the CT.


Yet more radiation! Not to mention I think I may need some dental xrays soon for dental problems.

I'm concerend that NO ONE is keeping track of how much radiaiton this all adds up to (did I mention I also had PET a few months ago?) and the risks of getting a second cancer because of all this. Does anyone know where I can help keep track MYSELF of this and the risks I may be exposing myself to? I'm not so happy about this latest CT scan, which is looking for a problem that I only know about because of a past CT scan that was really looking for something else and otherwise seems to be a noninssue in terms of my health right now.

Nelie

The dental xrays are a miniscule amount.

The spiral CT is not in the head and neck area.

PET's use radioisotopes which are pee'd out after a few hours and have a very short half life - there is no gamma radiation involved.

I would be more concerned if you were getting regular followup CT's of the head and neck. MRI's are much safer.

Thanks Gary. I was hoping you'd come along and amswer this. You're right this CT isn't in an area where I've had radaition. How about chest xrays? I had about two of those a day when I was in the hosp. with a ruptured esophagus that had caused a collapsed lung. I totally udnerstand why they were needed but unfortunately they were over roughly the same area where I had rad. for breast cancer (right chest).

You've set my mind at ease a little though. This will be the first CT I've had since treatment.

Nelie

This link should clear up any other xray questions:

http://www.radiologyinfo.org/en/pdf/x-ray_safety.pdf

Thank you Gary. That's a great resource. Just the sort of thing I was looking for. It really makes clear what a huge difference there is between rad from a CT and from an xray. I'm still not clear on where barium swallow tests fall in there though.

I think I do need to start a record of all the radiation-related things I have had, just to use when I talk to doctors about additional procedures, as that document suggests that patients should do. It also reminds me I should get the radon in our house tested again (we had a test that was within limits before we bought the house, but it had been closed up for months and I understand sometimes radon can actually test low under those circumstances--high radon is a problem around here--including for people living just down the hill from us who have had to do radon remediation).

Nelie