My MRI and my You're-so-lucky-nothing-happened award story

So I had headaches last weekend with weird vision problems. I finally called my oncologist and left a message. Diane, Dr. Brouns's nurse, called me back and I chatted with her and told her what was going on. She said she gets migraines and it sounds exactly like that. But she would talk to the doctor and see what he wanted to do. I got a call the next morning from her and Dr. Brouns thought it was probably migraines but wanted to do an MRI just to be on the safe side and they want to do it that day. I've never had one before and was a little nervous. Doing research and being very prepared helps me feel better and so I searched on the internet about what to expect. I asked people if they had had one and asked what it was like.

Dad met me at Vancouver Radiology and we sat there for 45 minutes before they called me back. It was so annoying. Why have me get there at 12:30pm when they wouldn't have me get started till after 1pm? Grrrr. Anyways, I changed into my lovely hunter green scrubs and took my wedding ring off and went back to the room. They had to give me an IV because I have a history of cancer. That's their reasoning anyways. They ended up giving me something in the IV at the end so they could takes some images with reverse something or other. The stuff in the IV made the films appear in a different light. I don't know the proper words for it.

So I lay down on this table. By now I've figured out that it's a closed MRI tube. Great, I know I'm not claustraphobic, but still, I'm not thrilled by it either. I lay down with my head fitting in this space so that my head doesn't move around a lot. Almost exactly like I did for radiation. They put wedges under my knees and under my arms to keep them propped up. They gave me a nice blanket and then stuck ear plugs in my ears. When I entered the room, they took my glasses off and my hair scarf. So I'm blind as a bat, but I'm very comfortable on this table. Then they put a cloth over my eyes so it will help "relax" me they say. Then I hear a click and I peek out from under my cloth and they put a contraption over my face to keep my head in place. It's not actually touching me, but if I had my glasses on, I could have seen that it was about an inch or so from touching my face. They slid me in the tube and they had a speakerphone where they spoke to me and told me what was going to happen.

I would hear some clicking noises and then almost like a loud honk of a semi truck. A few blasts of those and then it sounded like what it would be like if you were stuck in the middle of a washing machine while tennis shoes were thumped and spun around you. I'm glad I had the headphones on, because I still got a slight headache from the noise. I really was very comfortable and eventually got used to the noise. It would run from 2-4 minutes, each set of films or images they had to take. This happened for about 30 minutes or so.

After I got out, Dad and I drove up through the parking lot to Los Jalepenos for a late lunch. We parked directly in front of the place, it was in a strip mall. I was talking on the phone when Dad pulled up and so I got out and went inside and had a fabulous lunch at one of my new favorite places to eat. It was a great lunch and then we had to leave. I checked my coat for my keys and couldn't find them anywhere. Then I had a horrible feeling that I looked them in the car. So I go over and peek in and they are still hanging from the car ignition. I was freaked out about what Jason would do when I had to call him from work and ask him to come and get me unlocked from the car. I tried the car door just out of habit and found it was unlocked! HOLY COW!!! What incredibly good luck!!! For a real dingbat!! lol I've never done that before in my life. Ever. I was so lucky nothing happened. The fact that we were parked almost right in front of it helped a lot, but I'm still a little shaky at how stupid I was.

Back to the MRI. The doctor was going to get the results in 24-48 hours and then he would call me. I was really hoping that he would call me before the weekend. But seeing that it's 11:47pm on a Friday night, I don't see that happening. Oh well, something to look forward to on Monday. Hopefully we'll hear good news!!!