My Millionth MRI (approximately)

BIG follow-up appointments this month.  I spent hours and hours and hours at Yale in the middle of July.  Honestly, most of those hours were spent letting people try to find my veins with needles.  WORST THING EVER.

When I went for my MRI, I had an order in for bloodwork, so they decided to take the blood while they were finding a vein to prepare for when they needed to inject contrast (dye) to make things show up on the MRI better. 

So there I sit in the waiting room wearing, I kid you not, paper pants.  Imagine paper towels…in the shape of pants.  I’m not sure what Yale has against hospital gowns, but paper pants are ridiculous, not to mention freezing cold, especially with how hospitals love to blast the A/C.

So I’m shivering in my new paper towel outfit when I tell the nurse, “Look, I have small veins, so you might as well save us both some time and call your supervisor over to stick me.”  She ignores me.  I know she can’t handle these veins, but she is confident.

Three needle sticks later, she decides to call her supervisor.

And those had not just been polite little needle sticks, but each was a slow stick followed by pulling the needle in and out, and rooting all around under my skin.  Ouch.

The supervisor tries twice more and, rather than admit defeat, she declares me too cold and relegates me to a wheelchair in the corner where she covers me with wet, warm towels.  I was like a big white snow man, with melting paper pants.  Then they forget about me.

Meanwhile, some dude is having a panic attack in the next cubicle, cussing out the nurses, and faking chest pain to get out of his MRI.

Oy.

They remember me again.  This time the floor supervisor tries, declaring, “I prefer to use the bigger needles.”

Why, Zeus, why?

She even uses the ultrasound vein finder machine, but no.  After rooting around and making me bleed everywhere, I have nothing to show but a lap full of bloody gauze and alcohol pad wrappers…and three more bruises in my hands and wrists coming on.

Believe me when I say that repeatedly hearing the phrase, “Oh, I blew out another vein!” is seriously disturbing. 

Her one accomplishment was drawing some tubes of blood from a vein in my hand.  IN MY HAND.  So much pain...  I just don’t think that is supposed to happen.  My purple and green hands and wrists confirm this belief. 

Then they forget about me again.

And finally, an expert from anesthesiology comes in, and even she needs to try twice.  She implements the slap the patient’s arms silly approach, which is rather painful considering my arms and hands are full of holes at this point.  Then finally, FINALLY I get an IV in for the MRI. 

Meanwhile, I’ve blown hours past my MRI appointment and my oncologist appointment.  It literally took hours to get one, stupid IV in.  At Yale-freaking-hospital.

Fortunately, after having done everything in my power to not cry for the entire morning, things did get better.

After the MRI, I was ushered right in to see my neuro-oncologist (he is awesome)—apparently he sent out search parties to see what the heck was taking them so long to start the MRI (a very good question, dear doctor).  He and his assistant reviewed the images immediately.  Although nobody to-date has been able to give me a definite “cancer-free” assessment because of all of the post-surgical blood muddling up the MRI scans, my doctor was confident that all he could see on my scans this time around is scar tissue, no polyps or unusual things of any kind.

His confidence is so reassuring.  Nicest of all, he gave me some advice—which Jack is very quick to remind me of—he said, you should not be thinking about this every minute of every day, don’t be afraid to live your life.

That was a powerful moment for us.

At Jack’s request, the doctor also gave the green light to go on the kiddie rides at Six Flags, which had someone doing a victory dance… (Hint: not me)

 Boy, do I have a lumpy dome, or what??

And my poor little boneless, metal plate section at the back :-(  Did you know that the metal pinches my muscles back there a bit, so I can’t lay down with the back of my head pressing directly into the pillow?  True story.  I need to have a cheek facing down or else its ouchy…and sometimes I can hear the plates and mesh clicking, which is all kinds of weird. 

I liked this^ because of the pretty colors.  They’ve given me this image in black and white, but this was the first time I’ve seen it in all of its colorful glory, and it is much more fabulous this way.