Dear Diary,
Yesterday I was back out there, against my will….testing to see if I did, indeed have a mini stroke on Sunday, using noone’s favorite test, the MRI. My distaste for MRIs is well documented. I’ve probably had six at this point, the first of which was in college, the most recent before yesterday, about 5 years ago. It’s always fantastically stressful–the exceedingly loud alarm bursts, the dark and airless coffin-like machine. When they are examining your brain they pour some extra claustrophobia sauce on the situation by locking your head in its own little cage.
I was the only one in the waiting room. There are signs on all the chairs that say “do not sit”. After standing for 25 minutes (despite being the only one in there) I checked in with the receptionist to see if it wouldn’t be a better idea to wait in the car. She agreed.
While in the car I had another episode of a fib. My heart felt like something rumbling around under the covers, identity unknown, except it was trapped in my chest and I knew exactly what it was. I tried to put my foot on it’s neck through deep breathing, imagining that I’d grab hold of my CNS and calm it the fuck down. In the midst of this wrangling, my phone rang. It was the MRI office calling to tell me to come back.
I walked across the empty underground parking lot, back into the building, back into the MRI office, back into the room with the device. I’d come dressed in multiple layers, none of which contained metal. My heart was still eggregiously out of sync. The tech instructed me to get on the specimen tray. I asked him, “how do I let you know I’m freaking out? I’m having a fib right now!”
“That’s okay,” the tech said. “You’ll be fine. But squeeze this panic ball if you need help, okay? Off we go!”
He closed the cage over my face and pushed a button to move my specimen tray into the belly of the beast. Then the alarms started. It literally sounds like you are inside a firehouse with a four alarm blaze threatening outside the body of the machine. I thought, “how on earth will this work for the a fib? I’m going to press the panic ball and get the hell…out of here.”
But then I didn’t–because I didn’t want to go through this drill again, and I wanted to figure out if I’d had a stroke Sunday night or not. And miraculously, about 5 minutes in, my heart quieted down–in the midst of the agonizing claustrophobia and the blasting noise, I settled into a deep breathing routine.
I went home, did the Silkwood, waited to hear about the results. Hours ticked by. I convinced myself both that my neurologist would sit on bad results, and why she’d call me immediately with bad results and what it possibly meant to have no results.
More hours went by.
And then she EMAILED–total victory. Scan was clean.
That is more than enough excitement for one day. I went to bed at 7:30.
Until tomorrow.