There’s a little box on the intake form that says, “Are you claustrophobic?” I checked “No”. I’d had my first set of MRIs six months ago in the hospital and while I got a little panicked towards the end of a series of two, I thought I did pretty well. I know I’m claustrophobic, but I would describe it as “mild” (before this). As I told my husband, “I can usually talk myself through it without an issue.” I didn’t assume this round would be any different.
We knew our drive down for the MRIs would be about 3.5 hours without any stops and since I recognize the anxiety I get when cutting time close, I take measures to avoid that anxiety, which means we gave ourselves enough time for a leisurely breakfast somewhere along the way, as well as some time for any construction or traffic issues. Since there were none, we arrived at the appointment two hours early. Unable to check into our hotel room early, we just went to the imaging center, told them we were early but it was 105 degrees outside, so we just wanted to sit patiently in their air conditioned waiting room.
I have to have three areas of the body imaged: brain, cervical spine, and thoracic spine. This round of MRIs were for with and without contrast (dye that gets injected into your blood stream). With my first set in the hospital, they didn’t do any contrast. I didn’t realize what a difference this would make for me when scheduling. HUGE difference!
Alfredo was the tech who took be back. I had no anxiety going in. Laid down on the “bed”. Then, Alfredo snapped a large plastic bar over my chest. There had been nothing strapped on me during the hospital MRIs. “Are you comfortable?” Panic set in. “Um… I can’t take a deep breath without this bar pressing into my chest.” If I was like that for the next hour, I knew I would have an anxiety attack… I do NOT like constriction, particularly of my chest or throat. “Oh, just scoot down a little.” Ahhh… I could breathe again. I’d had my hands resting across my stomach, as that was more comfortable for my back. Alfredo started sliding me into the tube and once again, I was constricted and went into a panic. “Are you okay?” “No! My hands are being pressed into my stomach.” Pulled me back out and I put my hands down at my side. Ahhh… I could breathe again.
A woman was running the MRI machine and she was my voice over the intercom. “Okay Jennifer, we’re going to do your neck area first, so no swallowing until I tell you to.” What?! No swallowing? So of course, as soon as she says that, my sinuses decide they’re going to drain a lot of thick mucous into the back of my throat. The kind that makes you need to cough hoarsely. You know how you’re on the phone when you have a cold, trying not to hack into the other person’s ear so your eyes start tearing up, your face starts turning red and your throat feels like it’s going to explode? Luckily, it passed quickly. Then I was fine. This was not an imaging center that played music or let you bring your own, so I started singing songs in my head to relax. “This next one will be about a minute and a half, swallow now, then don’t swallow.” One song down. “Ok Jennifer, go ahead and swallow. This next one will be three minutes, don’t swallow.” Sing this song twice in my head. “Go ahead and swallow. This one will be five minutes.” Five minutes?! One song… sing it again… another song… now go through Christmas songs, think cool thoughts, think cool thoughts. God damn it! I’ve sung four songs, hasn’t it been five minutes yet?
After about a half hour, we moved on to my thoracic area. At this point, I’m starting to get a terribly uncomfortable pain in my lower-left rib. I recalled this pain from the series of MRIs in December… it’s what had caused me to start feeling panicked then. I have lower back issues and laying on my back for even ten minutes without being able to move can be terribly uncomfortable… I’d been in there a half hour. All I need to do to alleviate the pain a bit is move my hips/knees from side to side and/or lift my butt up off the surface. I believe part of the issue with this rib aching is my arms being pinned to my sides. I really felt like if I could just rest my hands on my stomach, it would have helped, but that wasn’t happening.
“We’re going to do your chest area now. Try not to take any deep breaths,” she says to the girl stuffed into a Pringles can who’s in pain and starting to have a panic attack. Another half hour. I don’t even care how long the bursts of imaging are anymore, I’m just singing the same songs over and over and over in my head, with the mantra, “Relax. Relax. Relax. Relax. Relax.” Weirdly, Frankie Goes To Hollywood was not on my mental playlist, heheh. Another half hour trickles by.
“Okay Jennifer! Good job! Now we’re going to pull you out and insert the dye.” Alfredo is waiting at my feet. “Don’t move now, we need you in the same position you were in so they can compare the images.” I say to him, “I won’t move from where I’m at, but I have to lift my butt up… I’m in a lot of pain.” “Ok, but don’t move positions.” I have a fucking bar strapped across my chest… I can’t move my position. At this point, my back is in so much pain, that I can’t even actually lift my butt up off the table. All I can do is try to move my knees from side to side. “Don’t move.” I heard you the first six times, did you hear me when I said I’m in a lot of pain? I’m so miserable, I feel the tears coming on and that makes me mad at myself. “Don’t cry, why are you crying?!” “Oh, maybe because you’re in a tremendous amount of pain and there’s nothing you can do about it because you have to get this imaging done and if you fuck it up, they’re just going to make you do it again and you’ll be in there even longer,” I answer myself. Fortunately, Alfredo gets a vein with the first try and then they stuff me back into my own personal hell.
During this next half hour, my back is spasming in pain. I’m trying so hard not to move, but it’s just wave after wave of pain, and the spasms are involuntary, so they make me twitch and jerk. I’m wondering if the muscle will actually just seize up and then what?!
Finally, I’m done. Alfredo is gone, but Oscar has replaced him. “Um… you’re going to have to help me sit up because my back has seized up and I can’t do it myself.” I feel traumatized. I feel abused. I feel like a puppy who’s been kicked a few times. And all I can think is, “Fuck. I have to come back and do this again tomorrow.” When I went out to the waiting room where my ever-patient husband has been sitting for three and a half hours now, I’m know I looked a sight because they have a big mirror on the wall – face red, hair all rumpled, eyes shining with tears, mascara smudged down my face. “All done?” he asks. “Let’s get out of here… now.”
We didn’t even do anything that night. Checked into our hotel, went to the Mexican restaurant next door for dinner, then put pajamas on and just relaxed. My husband’s neck was giving him issues and he’d done all the driving. I was in pain. We were both looking forward to a good night’s sleep… but that didn’t happen. The hotel had the worst pillows I’ve ever slept on. Doors just kept banging shut all night, startling me awake with a jerk. I got about three hours of sleep and woke still in pain. Our continental breakfast bar had carbs in many forms: oatmeal, waffles, cereal, bagels, English muffins. So I ended up with a sour apple and three very disgusting fatty sausages.
On to round two: The Brain. I actually wasn’t dreading it that morning as much as I was the night before. Even though I hadn’t had much rest, I still had rest. I still had the knowledge that it was one area instead of two. And I self-medicated with gabapentin, so I was at least a little high going into it. I had more resolve than I thought I’d have. Unfortunately, Alfredo was not working the next day, just Oscar. This time, instead of the lovely bar across my chest, I got a plastic mask strapped over my face, all Silence of the Lambs style, complete with a thin mirror over it. Do you know what I could see with that lovely mirror every time I looked into it? Only my shimmery eyes full of fear and anxiety. Why the hell would anyone want to look into their own eyes while going through this… whether they had anxiety or not?
The first part was about twenty minutes. My back/ribs started hurting about ten minutes in. Then they pulled me out to insert the dye, and I was thinking, “Whew! Only a few more minutes to go and I’m done.”
“It’s really important not to move your head at all, Jennifer.” “Can I lift my butt up?” “No, don’t move at all, please.” Oscar was there to poke my vein… except he couldn’t find them. So he started smacking my right forearm and mumbling about how they were hiding from him. Then he made the tourniquet tighter, seriously pinching my skin. “Can you stand that for just a minute?” “Only for a minute probably, that really hurts. But go ahead!” He switched to my left arm, couldn’t find it. Switched back to my right and tied the tourniquet crazy tight again. He decided he thought he found a vein, stuck the needle in. “Oh… no, I didn’t get it. I thought I did, but I didn’t. Oops… I think I got a little dye in there.” This went on for like 5 minutes. I’m squeezing a fist until my hand is starting to cramp. Finally I hear a woman come over and say, “Let me have a look Oscar. How long has this tourniquet been on her? I don’t like that, let’s get it off her. Okay honey, let’s see what I can find, I’m pretty good. Let’s look at this spot on your left hand, there’s usually a spot I like that I can usually get. Hmm, it IS hard to see your veins, isn’t it?” She starts smacking my arm too. Thinks she found it, sticks the needle in, nope. Jabs around a little, apologizes profusely, pulls the needle out. Meanwhile, Oscar is still messing around with my right arm, where the woman goes back. She assures me that if she can’t get it this time, they’ll go find someone else who’s even better than she is, and she’s pretty good, and they have two other ladies who are pretty good with this kind of thing. Very comforting, heheh. She thinks she found a vein, Oscar tells her that it might be a vein or it might be the dye he accidentally got under my skin with his first stabbing. Actually, I’m fairly sure Oscar stabbed me twice, but I’m already trying to block the whole experience out of my memory, heheh.
This is really where I started feeling like an alien abductee – I was pinned to a table with a face mask where I could look into a mirror and see my fear-riddled eyes, people I couldn’t see but could only hear were pinching me, slapping me, stabbing me with needles, I was in pain but couldn’t move, there was one blindingly bright light that shone down onto me, and there were weird-ass noises like birds and machinery (I asked what caused it and Oscar said the simplest way to put it was the machine was mixing liquids… no idea what that meant in regards to the MRI machines.)
She gets the vein, they shove me back in. I sing my songs, my back spasms, Oscar has to help me up. It’s like a “rinse and repeat” thing from the previous day.
They burned me copies of the images right there that I got to keep. I haven’t looked at them yet… not even sure if I’d be able to notice any difference from the last set. I see the neurologist next month and we’ll go over them then.
One thing I learned – I cannot schedule two MRIs at a time. Next time, I’m spreading them all out. I could have even done one in the morning, come back a few hours later and done another. But definitely need that space in between for my back’s sake and for my mind’s sake. And I’m saying “hell yes” to drugs next time.
Just a reminder for any lower income MS folks in the US, the MSAA has an Access Fund for financial help with MS patients’ MRIs. They’re helping me out and I can’t even tell you how grateful I am for that!
But most importantly (heheh), all of my piercings went back in after two days of being out. Nothing healed over! Score!
And I’ll end this horrific post with some beautiful shots of the scenery through wine country on the trip back. Though my husband really just wanted to get home, I think he knew that I needed to just take a little extra time to take some photos of beautiful things. I’d had two cocktails at lunch and was drunk (because I never drink) and definitely seeking a happy place to balance out that trip. 🙂
M.S. - It's Weird 