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A typical day

Early start in the hot lab, drawing up the day's doses behind lead shielding and checking each one. Then patients: a bone scan for cancer spread, a heart stress test with a tracer, a thyroid scan, a lung scan for a suspected clot. You inject, wait for the tracer to travel, position the patient under a gamma camera and acquire images for 20 to 40 minutes each. Between scans you process images for the physician, run quality control on the camera and manage radioactive waste. Mostly weekdays, with some on-call.