So, is the Chemo working or not? Good question. I’ve done four of a possible eight with the fifth one due on Friday. The only way to find out for sure is to take a look inside me, hence the CT Scan.

The problem with X-Rays is they past straight through soft tissues so what do you do if you want a picture of the floppy stuff inside? Well, one option is to slice me open and have a poke around but since this tends to be slow and expensive, not to mention uncomfortable, it is probably worth a hospital investing half a £mil or so in a CT Scanner. A CT or Computed Tomography scanner uses X-rays to produce an image of a slice of the body including all the soft bits. The end result is a kind of MTV/fly through video of your insides enabling Doctors to take a look without any messy business.

The scanner needs a bit of help though and the first bit of help is in the picture below. Here’s the routine.

First, turn up an hour before your appointment and accept a bottle of white paint to drink. You have to drink this over about 30 min then fill the bottle with water and drink the water over another 30 min. The white paint makes your intestines more opaque so they show up on the scanner. It also has a radioactive indicator (barium) which again shows up more clearly when scanned.

[You’ll understand that this is a layman’s very poor description of what goes on.]

Next you have to undress and don a fetching hospital gown. Why are these impossible to do up yourself? All hospital gowns seemed to have been designed for Houdini. Anyway you can keep your socks and shoes on. Picture me in a gown with socks and shoes clutching the rest of my clobber in a plastic bag. Elegant, I hope you’ll agree.

No hospital visit is complete without someone wanting to make a hole in you so, true to form, a nurse turns up next to insert a cannula. This went smoothly – the first of three times I’m going to be punctured this week.

Next a personal invite to the scanning room. And yes, it is just like something Willy Wonka put together.

The CT scanner is like a very large polo – not like the MRI scanner you might have seen, you go through it rather than inside it. A big polo made by Toshiba or as I like to think of it, fellow food lovers, a doughnut. You lie on a bed which rises and then moves you in and out of the doughnut. Toshiba made the doughnut talk and she speaks in a very forceful westernised voice issuing stern commands to hold your breath etc.

Anyway, I missed a bit. The point of the cannula is to put yet another sort of die inside you. This ‘contrast medium’ immediately creates a feeling of warmth in both buttocks. Yes. Side benefits.

You lie there, obeying the precise instructions of the doughnut, and then it’s all over. Takes seconds.

Next thing is to reverse your way out of the hospital.

Nice nurse removes the cannula and applies plaster.

Dress again. Strict instructions to drink a lot to shift those dyes out of my body.

Leave (or in my case, move swiftly to rapid application of coffee and bacon sandwich).

We’re on NHS time here so who knows when the results will be out but hope to have them before next Chemo on Friday.

I’ll keep you posted.