In 2003 Jonathan Gluck was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, essentially a bone marrow cancer. To confirm the diagnosis, his doctor ordered a full-body PET scan, considered one of the best tests for early detection of the disease. The day of the appointment, the medical staff injected a radioactive tracer into Gluck’s bloodstream, then instructed him to lie down on a machine similar to a CT scanner.
It took about an hour on a weeknight after work, and afterward, Gluck made a throwaway joke to the technician: Am I glowing from the radioactive tracer? “I meant it as a bit of gallows humor, but he answered by essentially saying, Actually, sort of,” Gluck, a journalist, writes in his forthcoming memoir, An Exercise in Uncertainty. The technician told him he might want to avoid sleeping next to his wife if she happened to be pregnant. She wasn’t, Gluck responded, but they did have a 7-month-old. “Oh,” the technician said. “You should definitely stay away from her.”
Gluck went to a diner and stayed there until 2 a.m., about the time the technician said the radioactivity should be out of his system—a small precaution he wouldn’t have known to take if it hadn’t been for that random conversation with the tech. In his memoir, he writes about the incident. “Why wasn’t I warned of the potential risks to Didi and A.J.?” he says, naming his wife and daughter. “What similar hazards have I, or you, not been informed of?” To read the full story.