MRI's suck ass.

         I recently came down with a case of the goosebumps.  Now we all get goosebumps, sure, but ten to fifteen times a day, in weird patterns, down ONLY the left side of your body?  Hmm, maybe not.  Was I cold?  No.  Was I holding in a fart?  Well, maybe, but certainly not ten times a day, I'm not THAT classy.

        So what's the deal, goosebumps?  In my weird "there's nothing wrong, everything's fine, let's not involve the authorities here" mind I ignored it.  Because we all know if you ignore health issues they go away.  However, I made the big mistake of mentioning it, albeit in an offhanded joking way, to my doctor when I was in there for a flu shot.

-"Is there anything else going on today other than the shot, Kristin?"

-"Well yeah I guess, now that you mention it.  What do you know about goosebumps?"

SHUT UP, KRISTIN. SHUT UP!  He's gonna make you do stuff to find out what that is!

        So after I blab the whole thing to my hunky doctor (I've got a little crush on him, he's so damn NICE to me, always making me feel better, it's not my fault) about the goosebumps he gets very serious, stops smiling and says to me, "You get goosebumps, for no reason, multiple times a day, down only the left side of your body?  I do NOT like the sound of that."

Big, big emphasis on the NOT.

Great.

I'm dying, I just know it.  Me and my stupid big mouth.

He then says, "Now, I don't want to scare you, but.... it could mean you have M.S."

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?  How did I go from holding in farts to Multiple Sclerosis for crying out loud?  Why did I even say anything.  I could have just gone about my newly vaccinated, weird goosebumpy way and be done with it.  No, now I've got MS.  Awesome.

         I think for a minute and then say, "Well, personally I think it's a pinched nerve although my grandmother had MS, is it hereditary?" he almost yells at me "Kristin, you don't have MS."  I say,  "Then why the hell are you suggesting that I DO??!!" Crush is beginning to wain here, doc.

         Blah blah blah after much back and forth he says, "Well, I'm sure you don't have it (I am the type of person that once you enter this thought into my head that's what I have, that's it, I should just go home and start getting my affairs in order.  I've been dying since the day I was born.  And not in that deep cosmic way that's actually true but in the way that means I've caught every disease and virus and cancer known to man at least one time or another.  My mother calls me a hypochondriac, personally I just think I'm a realist.)

         So, now he's sending me for all kinds of blood tests and a referral for a neurologist AND a MRI.  BLECH.  I've never had one, but it doesn't take a dummy to figure out you don't want to be stuck in that weird coffin tube.  Plus, this shit is getting real now.  What if they actually FIND something.  This is not going the way I planned. So much easier to ignore the goosebumps and live in ignorance.  Ignorance is a peaceful place, and everyone loves me there, and you live forever.

         Well , the neurologist was a nice guy he gave me the MS physical consultation which just meant poking me with various sharp sticks and asking if I could feel it the same on both sides, which I did athankyouverymuch.

         Regardless, he still wanted to send me for the MRI.  Balls.  Apparently I had two of the markers for MS: low vitamin D levels and low thyroid.  THESE are markers?  Practically every woman I know right now has these two issues.  What does he know.  But, because of these and the fact that my grandmother had it, I was being sent in.

         Despite all the prepping I did for my big MRI day, even my friend Kriste who gets this done every year for a brain tumor wrote a special blog just for me about how best to handle an MRI.  I read it.  It was nice.  It didn't help.  I still freaked out.

        A few weeks later, after much fretting and imagining what it will be like in the tube, the day finally arrives.
   
       I went to the MRI clinic which was very space agey and clean, SOMEONE got a big donation, hey ohhhh...  The place didn't match the rest of the hospital, I felt like I was in some upscale swanky bar in Manhattan, I almost asked for a martini from the receptionist.  It was a very cool place, personally I think they're just trying to trick you into forgetting why you're there, but still nice.
       The morning of my appointment Kriste very thoughtfully sent me a card wishing me a happy birthday, although birthday was crossed out and "MRI day" was written in.  On the inside she wrote, "If they tell you to strip down to your birthday suit, don't fall for it, they try that on all the rookies."  This is funny because when I arrived at the clinic the doctor showed me the changing room with those hideous hospital gowns, (why are these things so ugly, isn't possible to hold on to just a little bit of my dignity while I'm in here?)...  He told me to put this on with the ties in front, so I immediately started to take off my shirt, he said, "Whoa, you can keep your clothes on, just take off any metal you have and put this on."  Oops.  How quickly I forgot about Kriste's advice....I was just so nervous, I was on autopilot, hands moving of their own accord.  It's probably because I have MS. (every glich or tick I had for the last three weeks was because of my new possible MS diagnosis.)

        So once I emerge, resplendant in my ultra chic puce gown the doctor has me stand on this pad by the door that is some kind of sensor to detect metal on my body.  There's something about the MRI machine reacting badly to any kind of metal, apparently the machine is loaded with magnets and things can go richocheting about if not removed before hand.  The sensor was called a FERR Sensor, but when I glanced down to stand on it (before he told me what it was) I thought it said "FEAR Sensor" and thought, "Jeez, they DID get a big donation, they even have a machine that can sense what level of fear you're at before you go in."  Hello moron it's a metal detector.  But really, wouldn't a fear detector be COOL?

        So in I go to the "room" with the big scary machine.  Yikes, fear definitely spiking,where's my martini?  They were all very nice and helpful blah blah blah but it didn't help, I was still scared shitless to go into that tunnel.   Part of the fear is because of what it will mean once you go into that machine.  No turning back, if there's something wrong they're going to find out and your life will be forever changed.  This is what the machine represented to me.  I'm a healthy 40 year old before I go into the tube, I'm a possible MS or brain tumor patient when I come out. This is some real stuff here.
     
       But, I try my best to be brave and follow what the doctor tells me to do.  He gives me ear plugs to put in, then hands me big headphone ear protection to wear over that.  Okay, that's ok, I can do that.   I'm ready to go in.
Hold the phone there, Kdawg, you aren't finished.

         Then he directs me to lay down on the little platform, which I do and still am thinking this is all doable until he walks over to me holding this huge white thing that looks like the front of a welders helmet complete with little viewing window.  He's talking to me through the headphones and it's all muffled but what I understand is that they are going to clamp this thing down on my head, click click, so that it keeps my head completely in place, no movement allowed when taking pictures of your brain.  This thing is so snug against my ear protection that it almost hurts.  So there I'm lying, head ratcheted into place, sound muffled and in you go.  No time to even adjust, they just put you in there wham bam thank you ma'am.

 

         Now I didn't used to get claustrophobic but apparently now I do, especially when my head is anchored down inside of a tube the size of a small sewer pipe.  And what's worse is that I thought I'd only be in there for 30 minutes but RIGHT before they got me to lay down on that platform he told me it would take more like 45 minutes because they were doing the contrast MRI, which means they inject ink into your arm which travels up to your brain, giving them a better picture of what's going on in all that gray matter.  45 minutes?  That's almost an hour.  SHIT!  I'm going to lose it, I'm going to lose it.  I'M GOING TO LOSE MY SHIT right here in his nice space age hospital and I am going to rip this helmet off and go running and screaming through the hospital in my puce gown and not look back until I reach my house and am safely locked in my bathroom away from the bad men.

         Alas I did not to do that, but I came p-r-e-t-t-y damn close. All you can think about after being anchored down, told not to move, and put into the machine is think about every single muscle and tingle in your body at that exact moment.  "Oh god, I should have stretched my neck before I got in, I think it's cramped, there's an itch on my shoulder, oh I can't move to scratch it I HAVE AN ITCH!"  I seriously almost went looney tunes over this shoulder itch which persisted for about 10 minutes, as if being stuck in a small cramped space isn't bad enough.

        Well the itch finally left and the neck never did cramp up, but it's hard not to obsess about those things when it's all you can think about and can't move.

        Thankfully I did manage to keep it together for the duration of the scan, but just barely.  Once they got me in there I could feel my heart start to pound, blood was speeding through my veins and I was starting to hyperventilate.  Plus it's really freaking LOUD, I guess it's the magnets moving around but at one point I actually thought we were going to be airborne as the machine started rattling and vibrating like an airplane does before take off.  I'm like, "Where the fuck are they taking me!"  At least this distracted my mind for a minute.  The only way I kept sane was to count in Italian in my head to as high as I could go then back again, as many times as I could.  I also tried to think about all the people I've known who've had MRI's and have not run barefoot and screaming to the parking lot.  I thought, if they've been brave enough to do this then I can too.  But man it was really awful.  I kept thinking, "if they find something wrong with me I'm just going to have to live with it because I am never going in one of these fucking machines again!"

        Thankfully after all was said and done everything turned out just fine, no MS lesions (which is what they're looking for) and no tumors or issues they could see.  The only comment my neurologist had was "Well, your brain is not quite as "full" as other 40 year old female brains are but other than that it looks good."  Full brains?  Is this what we're striving for in the brain department?  Well, if anything I've gotten a nickname out of it.  Kristin "Pea Brain" Leoncavallo.  "Kristin, you look different, is your brain smaller?"  Why yes, thanks for noticing, it's been working out.  Whatever.  I guess I have a small brain, but aren't small brains better than big?  That's what I'm going with.

       So my advice if you ever have to go in for a brain MRI:  Either see about having an "open MRI" which are just as the name suggests, open.  Much better for those of us with claustraphobia (I've heard they're not as effective but don't have any evidence to support this.  I've also heard Elvis is alive so you really shouldn't take what I say as fact.)  OR, if you can't find an open MRI near you, ask your doctor for some tranquilizers to knock you out and have a friend drive you.

Good luck.
 
-Pea brain.