The MRI Saga

My MRI was scheduled for Saturday morning. As soon as we walked into the admitting office, we heard the lady on the phone talking about labs. I just knew she was talking about me. Sure enough, she gets off the phone, verifies who I am and then tells me that before they can do the MRI, they have to know my creatinine level. Of course, I have my lab results from MD Anderson at the house, just not with me because nobody told us they would need them. So, we sit down while they figure out if they are going to be able to do the MRI since they didn't have any blood work. So we wait...and finally, the tech comes down and explains that they are going to go ahead and do the MRI, but that I will have to give up some more blood so they can run this test. Don't you know I was so excited!?!?! Well, they decide that since I am such a hard stick (as they say in the medical field), they will just pull blood from my IV since I will have to have one for the MRI. I say fine and then he tells us that the MRI will last about 3 hours because it is basically 4 tests and then they inject some glow in the dark stuff in me and do it all again. We aren't happy, but it has to be done. They get me in the room, changed into the lovely paper outfit and on the "bed" for the MRI machine. He told me that he was going to get the blood first so they could get it down to the lab. He put the IV in on my right hand (my 3rd this week) and used a syringe to pull the blood out. I could feel it all the way up my arm. It was very weird. He finally got all the blood that he needed and then flushed out the IV. I was ready to go. He explained to me how it worked and that I needed to be still. They are going to do all the tests and then inject me and run it again. He gets me positioned, and then tapes my head down. He put a washcloth over my eyes and then put a cage over my head. It really was the camera, but it was a cage too. He slid me in and I scrapped the sides going in. He slid me right back out and said he forgot to give me earplugs. So he put them in and slid me back in. I was trying to breathe deeply and I prayed that God would get me through it, but I couldn't do it. It totally freaked me out. I started crying and told him I couldn't do it and to get me out of there. I did the PET scan and thought it would be similar, but it was such a tight fit. I had my arms crossed in front of me to make my shoulders as thin as possible, but they still scrapped the sides of the machine. He told me that I could come back this week and they could do it with sedation, so we left. The more I thought about it, the more freaked out I got. Every time I closed my eyes that night, I was back in the machine. I lost it. After Rob saw how it affected me, he agreed with me that I couldn't do it even with sedation. This morning, Rob called Tyler Open MRI and they were able to get me in for one of the four tests. I went in and they did the cervical spine (neck). It was so much better. I could even keep my eyes open during the process. I could see the room out of the corner of my eyes so it was much better. I am scheduled to have the rest of them on Thursday if they do not start chemo on Wednesday. We meet with the oncologist tomorrow morning at 10:00 so I will have more to report on that.

With God, WE WILL BEAT THIS!!