This past week I went bike riding with a friend. It was dark, and the trail was riddled with ridges from tree roots. Apparently one of the trail bumps coincided with me putting on my brakes, sending me head over heels across the handlebars of my bike onto the asphalt of the trail.

By the time we got me home, the blood was no longer spurting from my face, and I seemed more bruised than broken. But suspecting the blood could have been spurting from a gash worthy of stitches, I decided it was worth going to the ER.

After a bit of probing, the ER doctor ordered up a set of chest x-rays to identify if I’d chipped or cracked any bones. When the films came back, he was happy to report that my spine and ribs showed no damage because of the fall from my bike.

Unfortunately, there was an incidental finding. On a pendicle of my T4 vertebra there appeared to be a blastic lesion. The ER recommended I follow-up with my primary care physician to investigate the possibility of “metastatic disease.”

I know lots of big words, and I even knew that a pendicle on my T4 vertebra would be one of those pointy bits jutting out from a vertebra behind my lungs. Blastic means a wound in the bone that is filling with extra cells. A google search of blastic lesion brings up a host of websites explaining that blastic lesions typically form on bone tissue due to cancer cells that have spread from some other cancerous site in the body.

Of course, an x-ray image that resembles a cancerous lesion could have other causes. But yesterday I underwent a full-body positron emission tomography (PET) scan, which should determine whether the lesion on my vertebra is cancerous, and if there is cancer anywhere else in my body. To do a PET scan, they injected me with a radioactive substance. It was fun getting a card to explain why I might show up as radioactive on security scans. Alas, no one detected me being radioactive, so I didn’t have a chance to pull out my “not-a-bomb” card. Sigh.

In the worst case, I’m riddled with disease and will die in short order. That would suck.

In another scenario, some cancer might be detected. Given that this potential abnormality was detected due to me breaking myself on asphalt pavement rather than because other bad symptoms were occurring, it’s likely that any cancer detected will be in the early stages, when cures are possible and highly successful.

In the best scenario, I get results indicating I am completely free of any cancers. That would actually be pretty awesome.

Meanwhile, I’m having fun watching the cuts and scrapes disappear while the contusions on my body from knee to shoulder fade from deep purple to sickly yellow. The body has an amazing power to heal itself, which always fascinates me.