I had an MRI scan today. I can only share what it is like, not what the results are. At my appointment with my consultant, on Wednesday, I am hoping to get the results.
What is it like?
Through a small door at the back of a waiting room, I am left in a curtained cubicle to remove any metallic objects. There is a locker for me to leave all my belongings. The appointment is early; my half eaten sandwich is left in the locker too. In the adjacent room, I am asked to sit in what appears to be a comfortable chair, but the design ensures that I feel like I am going to slide down and out of it, forwards, onto the floor. I always think of Gavin's baby chair and Nigel's hospital chair (both designed at uni), when I am using my legs (that can only just reach the floor) to retain my position. It is a chair with a high back, and squishy arms: "Rest your arm there", says my nurse, whose name I have already forgotten.
I am given a canula: this is a needle, inserted into a vein inside my elbow. I look away, the whole time, with my left hand across my eyes, "I always hate this", I tell the nurse. The canula is sellotaped to my arm, and has a long tube leading to a syringe. The nurse injects some saline fluid to check that it is working correctly. I have not looked, and I cannot feel anything. This is good.
In the waiting room, I wish that I had brought my book with me. The key to the locker has been taken by the nurse, so I can't go and get it. Reading the October edition of WOMAN, I learn that leather skirts have been "in fashion" through the winter.
Into the scanning room. I lay on a thin bed, and put my head in a cradle. This is not like the radiotherapy - I do not have a mask. They place large earphones over my ears, and put a case over my head. The case has a periscope that allows you to see out of the back of the scanner. The bed slides into a thin dark tube. The music blasts my ears: it starts with the LAs, "There she goes", which I like, but all the subsequent tunes were cheesy pop and quite unbearable, especially in succession. Every now and again, the music is interrupted by something that I know to be the nurse telling me that it will be 5 minutes of the next batch of treatment, except that I cannot hear what I am being told. Back to the cheesy pop ...
The scan sounds like really loud banging. Each phase has a different tone, and/or a different rate of pulse. I feel like I have been put into a tube, and then shaken around for about three hours. It is actually about twenty minutes. During the scan, a nurse inserted a dye through the canula; again, I felt nothing. When I was eventually slipped out of the tube, I am not sure which is worse - the banging and shaking, or the cheesy pop music!
Back to the waiting room, for another magazine. I can't remember what it was called, but it was full of horrific stories e.g. one was about a woman who discovered that her husband was a serial killer. I still have the canula in my arm. After twenty minutes, this was removed in the same clinic and slide-forward chair. "You are free to go".
Thanks for all your good luck messages.
Lots of love to you all
Sarah xxx
