My first MRI

While caring for my mother the past three and a half years I injured my lower back. The first time was a couple of years ago and I spent a lot of time lying on the floor on my back to relieve the pain. Eventually the sciatic nerve got pinched and I experienced pain and numbness running down my right leg. It would come and go. After sitting for over an hour one day in Bed, Bath & Beyond in one of their massage chairs while the girls did some Christmas shopping, I was cured. I'm not sure how or why, but the next day I could move around and the pain down the leg was gone. Periodically, depending on the shoes I wore or how much standing and walking I did, I would have some lower back pain, but it never lasted long.

At the beginning of January while my mother was in a nursing facility, the crappy one with the small bathroom, I had to help her by leaning over the wheelchair and twisting in a way that my back protested. A week after that I had to lift my mother into her wheelchair after calling 911 for help because she was completely out of her head and insisting on getting up. I tried to lift using my knees, but I must not have done it correctly because I've had pain ever since. First came the lower back pain. Then came the pain in the piriformis muscle which irritated the sciatic nerve and the pain and the numbness started again on the right side of my right leg from the knee to my toes. It never left. 

When my mother died I told myself I would get this looked at by a professional. Then summer came and we were goofing off busy and I put it off. After the diagnosis of my SIL, I experienced some breast pain myself, panicked like I'm known to do, and decided to get off the pot by calling the doctor. I figured I would do it all in one visit; the overdue blood work from February, the breast issue, and the lower back and numbness problem. My doctor I think thought I was either a hypochondriac or a nut job. But she dutifully dealt with my blood work, sent me for a breast mammogram and ultrasound, and scheduled me for an MRI on my back.

I have never had an MRI. I prided myself on that because once upon a time I never had medical problems. I was always the one that was never sick save for a cold here and there. After I turned 40 my body went to pot and illnesses and weird medical conditions forged past my strong barrier to make me sick and crazy. Yet. I never had to have an MRI. Until now. I left it to deal with last. After the mammogram and the ultrasound proved I was a nut case and a hypochondriac, I had the MRI last week.

I was a bit nervous going into it. I've read so many articles and heard from others how claustrophobic it is, how loud it is, and how coffin like it is. My mother, the queen of MRI's, complained how miserably uncomfortable they were for people with back conditions, yet she always fell asleep in them. My daughter had one a few months ago for her shoulder and she came out all nonchalant about her experience. Yet. I didn't channel those two, but instead focused on the claustrophobic, noisy, coffin, and got myself all tied up in knots by the time the appointment rolled around. The only saving grace, and what kept me sane, was the thought of getting to wear scrubs.

When the kind technician led me into the locker room she stopped and focused on my outfit. She hummed some as she studied me, thought aloud, "pants off", and proceeded to give me scrub bottoms, telling me I could leave my shirt on. Uh, no. I told her I thought I looked magnificent in scrubs and if I was going to wear the bottoms I might as well wear the top too. I told her that I had almost worn my own scrubs that morning. She shrugged and got me a top. It was like coming home after I put them on. I'm telling you, those things are the most comfortable, roomy, eye-fetching ensembles ever. And they make me look like a doctor health professional. Which I play all the time.

From the locker room we walked the halls of the imaging center taking right turns and then left turns, and she spun me around three times with my eyes closed and we did the hokey pokey. For a small building, that shares half of it with the breast center, this thing is a maze. We finally entered the area where my technician, whose name I have forgotten, but let's call her Donna, would be pushing the buttons and levers of the machine while watching me through hidden cameras and a giant window that protected her from all of the harmful gamma rays that would be shooting into me. Her room was dark with a large control panel that was lit up with different colored lights just waiting to be pushed. From there we entered into the room that housed the spaceship MRI. It was a white cylinder with a pull out panel covered in paper and with a pillow at one end.

"Hop up on here," Donna instructed. "Get comfortable and put these in your ears." She snickered and handed me two tiny, yellow, foam pegs. They kind of plugs that kids with tubes in their ears used to wear when I taught swimming lessons, and which ended up floating in the pool instead of protecting their ears EVERY time.

"Seriously?" I asked, staring at them in my hand. "Where's my headphones with the music?"

Donna laughed aloud. "They've been telling us we are getting music for years now. We don't have it." She put a pad under my legs as I climbed on to the panel and instructed me to move up and then down and then up and then down.

I informed her that I had exceptional hearing, one of the things that hadn't disappeared at the age of 40, and that I had once been written up in a medical journal for my exceptional hearing. I wanted her to understand that I was different from all the rest of her patients and that foamy pegs weren't going to cut it and might do some long term damage to someone with my abilities. Hello. I was wearing scrubs.

"You can put your hands over your ears if you want, " Donna said, ever the problem solver. "It won't bother me."

Well, it bothered me. Everything I read said you can't move. Not if you have an itch. Not if you have to sneeze. Not if you have to breath. No. Moving. I shoved the foams into my ears, crossed my arms over my chest, closed my eyes, and took a nice deep breath. 

"Bring it on, Donna," I said. (Well, I didn't say that actually because Donna wasn't her name, but you get the drift. I was a badass.)

Donna left the room, closing the door to the room with a nice hearty bang. I peeked out of my eyes as the panel began moving into the cylinder and discovered that it wasn't all that closed in as I had heard. I could see the opening and I had plenty of room to maneuver if I felt so inclined. I settled back and relaxed on my pillow, closing my eyes again. Donna's voice came out of nowhere startling me.

"Okay, here comes some sounds."

First came a knocking. I pictured the grim reaper knocking on the top of the MRI machine and then thought maybe that wasn't somewhere I should be going mentally. I turned the channel of my brain and then came a tut, tut, tut noise that sounded like every major appliance in my house before it breaks. Then came some grunting and a louder knocking and a steady low hum. Here are the thoughts that went through my head as these noises came and went, as the panel I was on moved back and forth, and as Donna gave me mysterious updates.

• Well, seriously, those foam pegs are pretty helpful. Who knew? I mean, they obviously don't keep water out of your ears, but they seem to be keeping the noise level down enough for my exceptional hearing to tolerate it.
• Good thing I took some Advil before I got in this thing. If I thought I had a headache then, imagine what my head would be like now. Wait. I wonder if I was allowed to take Advil. What did they tell me when they scheduled my appointment? I don't remember? Think, Cara, think. Were you allowed to eat? Drink? Pop pills? Oh, please. Settle down. They didn't even tell you not to wear jewelry or metal. If you hadn't of read that yourself in your perusing of the Internet, you would have come in all decked out in your gold. Which is annoying that they didn't tell me that. Now I wore my wedding ring and had to hide that in my wallet which is all inside that lousy locker in that room. What if someone steals it? No, it should be safe. No one can probably find the place.
• Why did I put my arms over my chest? I wonder if everyone does that in these machines? Can we put our arms at our sides? What would happen if I moved my arms now? Actually, I'm quite comfortable with my arms like this which I remember from some college class I took says that I'm not open to meeting new people. Is that why they pose dead people like that? Why do they make dead people in coffins clasp their hands like that? I should look that up later. It looks stupid now that I think about it. No one sleeps like this. Hmmm...actually my dad slept like that when he was napping on the couch. Or he had his arm over his head. I wonder if you could pose a dead person like that in a coffin. Why am I thinking of coffins and dead people? This machine isn't even coffin like.
• It's like I'm conducting a symphony. First comes the knocking. Now I point to the next section with my baton and the next noise sounds. And I move on and you, start your knocking. And the humming joins in. Ah, a symphony. Oh, please, when was the last time you were at a symphony? Hmmmm...I'd have to think about that. Probably in grade school when we all were bused to the Philharmonic. God, remember that? It was so boring. I wonder why I didn't take my girls to a symphony. I should have done that. I've probably stalled their creativity by not doing that. It's just like the whole tomato thing when Tom accused me to not feeding the kids tomatoes and causing them to hate them. Which makes no sense. How can you hate something if you haven't tried it? Madison likes ketchup. That has tomatoes in it. I wonder why I don't like tomatoes? Has something to do with texture, I think.
• Am I allowed to swallow? I want to laugh at the whole symphony thing. Can Donna see that I want to smile? She's probably wondering what I'm smiling about. I mean, what is there to smile about while you are lying here with that noise? I'm swallowing. She hasn't said anything about it. Jeez, she didn't give me any advice actually. I wonder if she can see anything about my back. I know if I ask her she will give me that whole oh-the-radiologist-will-read-that-I-couldn't-begin-to-speculate nonsense they all have to spout. Pfft. This is why I didn't become a technician. I would be offering up my opinions left and right. I would have been fired long ago. Sigh.
• How in the world did my mom fall asleep in here? I suppose if I were tired I might. Nah. I wouldn't fall asleep. My brain wouldn't let me. Please god, don't let this turn out to be anything serious. I need to lose weight. That's the bottom line. I know that will be a huge part of this diagnosis. Why can I not jump on that bandwagon? Maybe I'm depressed. I don't feel depressed. I feel tired. But not enough to fall asleep in here. Ten minutes she said. Who can fall asleep that fast? Oh, well, Tom could. That's so annoying.

And then suddenly I heard the door to the room open and Donna said something. I didn't catch it. She moved my panel and I opened my eyes as I slid out of the cylinder. 

"What?" I asked as I took out the foam pegs.

"I thought you said you had exceptional hearing?" Donna smart assed me.

"I did," I said, "before I went into that machine."

She led me back to the locker room where I changed out of my clothes and headed home. I did not steal the scrubs, but I thought about it. But I had some just like them at home. I did not ask Donna anything about what she saw while filming me. We parted ways discussing menopause. A few hours later my doctor's nurse called to tell me I had a "moderate extruded disc in L5 that was pinching the S1 nerve". Next up is a neurosurgeon visit. Most likely I'm not a candidate for surgery, but perhaps some exercises, physical therapy, and some injections might help. No mention of weight loss. I found that myself when Googling all of that after I hung up with the nurse.

Check MRI off my bucket list. Piece of cake. I'm still a warrior.