Vickie,
PET scans, early post Tx, often show false positives due to scar tissue. You are better waiting a little while for a PET. I don't understand the insurance issue however - they are different types of scans for different purposes.

It's not that PET scans offer "more information", just a different type of information and scans, in themselves, are not the total diagnostic package anyway - just a small component.

In my case I had a pre Tx PET, MRI and CT scan.
I had a mid Tx CT. Subsequently, post Tx, annual MRI's and a chest x-ray ever since.

The difference between a PET and a CT are:

CT: is basically an x-ray that takes a number of slices and a computer generated 3D image can be reconstructed from the slice data.

PET: Uses an injection of glucose that has been irradiated in a cylclotron. Cancer cells (and healing tissue as well) will have a greater uptake of the glucose, thereby concentrating the radioisotopes which will show up on the images as a black spot. Most PET's are full body (or torso anyway) scans.

Newer tecnologies combine PET and CT (PET/CT) and result in a much more accurate scan.

I would certainly feel good about clear scans though. I just got my 3 year MRI clear but I still take it one day at a time. Try to stay in the "now".

Yes - your feelings of doubt are normal and it took me a long time to start feeling good about the whole deal (2 years to be exact - that's when the recurrence rate drops considerably). We'd be more more worried about you if you weren't a "drama queen" at this stage. Please vent here all you want.