ingrid

I was feeling sort of dull and like I hadn’t experienced anything new lately, so I thought I would convince someone to shove me in an MRI machine.

On Thursday I tripped down to the old “Cancer Center” (note to Providence: this is not a comforting sounding place to go for a doctor’s appointment) at Providence and hopped up on the gurney for an adventure into sound and space.  I think they played Pink Floyd in there, but I am not sure.

Actually, they didn’t.  And I had experienced an MRI before, but not in a year or so, so it was time to take a peek into the old brain to make sure everything was getting along well.

You see, about a year and a half ago, I started having these really alarming episodes.  I would suddenly feel a little sick to my stomach, then the light would look sort of weird and otherworldly, and then I would just get all blind in 1/3rd of each eye.  I could see okay from the outside of my eyes, but somewhere in the center would be a big blob of nothingness.  Blind.  Truly.  This would last for about 30 minutes and then disappear, leaving me confused and sort of tired.

The first time this happened, I was sort of scared.  I needed to drive and get Francis somewhere and yet I knew I could not drive being unable to see.  The second time it happened I sat right down and cried.  I thought, “I knew it!  I’m going to be blind by 40!  Why did I fantasize about being Helen Keller?  It’s just not that great!”.

The third and fourth time it happened I did something that I rarely do:  I got on the phone to my doctor and tried to find out what the hell was happening to me.  My doctor sent me to get an MRI “just to check things out”.  I don’t know about you, but I had no idea what I was getting into.  I knew that they put you in a tube and that the space is sort of tight, but as I don’t have a lot of claustrophobia issues, I thought I would be fine.  I sort of imagined that I might be able to take a nap while I was in there.

Little did I know that being strapped down to a table and plopped in a MRI is about the LOUDEST place you could ever hope to be.  That first MRI was awful.  I laid in that white plastic tunnel and just cried as I was blasted with robotic nonsense cacophony.  I felt like the noise just drilled into my brain.  I hated it.

This is how the MRI works: (from Alberta Health Services informational webpage)

MRI is a non-invasive procedure that uses powerful magnets and radio waves to construct pictures of the body. MRI imaging is based on the magnetic properties of atoms. A powerful magnet generates a magnetic field roughly 10,000 times stronger than the natural background magnetism from the earth. A very small percentage of hydrogen atoms within a human body will align with this field. When focused radio wave pulses are broadcast towards the aligned hydrogen atoms in tissues of interest, they will return a signal. The subtle differences in that signal from various body tissues enables MRI to differentiate organs, and potentially contrast benign and malignant tissue. Any imaging plane (or “slice”) can be projected, stored in a computer, or printed on film. 

I love how peaceful that description is.  It is a “powerful” sound, not a deafening one!  The machine makes the worst sounds I have ever heard.  It makes crazy “we are now melting your brain” noises so even if your eyes are shut up tight, you can’t help but imagine the machine malfunctioning and shooting laser rays into your skull.  And you can not escape.  And you can not move.  And you can not sing along to try to make the noise better, nor pray, nor think as the noise is roaring through your brain even with the earplugs and baffles.  So basically it sucks and makes you feel like you are dying even if you are perfectly healthy.  And you are stuck there for more than an hour.

So a year and a half ago, I did my “just in case” MRI and they found a special extra thing in my brain that they called a “lesion” but I like to think of as a brain spot that gives me special powers.  They injected me with this dye stuff during the MRI to see what would happen with the brain blood barrier and apparently, the dye tells them that the lesion is probably not something bad.  Bad lesions, versus special extra ones, take on blood.  Cancerous tumors and such suck up all sorts of blood, so please, everyone who loves me, do not get dramatic on me…. I’m not dying yet, or rather, I am, but just VERY, VERY SLOWLY.  After the special powers were found, I was sent to a neurologist and she wisely diagnosed me with occular migraines.  The special powers might not have anything to do with the migraines or they might be the markings expected to be found in the brains of those similarly afflicted with the ‘graines.  I was told to come back to have my “brain do-dad” (her real words!) checked out in 6 months.  I was also told that I was not to take birth control as a migrainey person was at a much higher risk for stroke when using hormonal birth control.  I then did what any reasonable person would do after being told to not take birth control pills:  I got pregnant.

When pregnant, you can not be MRI’ed, or should avoid it if possible.  I did.  I continued to avoid it for another 12 months, but then I had to face it.  I faced it last week.

There were some bumpy spots on the road to the big white tube.  I had an appointment scheduled for Monday morning bright and early.  When I got there and was all ready to jump up on the tray, they noticed that I had written down that I was breast feeding currently.  

“Oh, you do know what the contrast does to your breast milk, right?” they asked.  Wha?  Apparently the substance in the contrast dye passes into breast milk and scientists have little idea of what it might do to babies.  They do know that it kills people with kidney problems though.  Hmmmmm…..

The technician then asked me if I had 24 hours worth of breast milk built up because I wouldn’t be able to feed Inez for 24 hours.  WHA?  Nursing women will know that this is unbelievable!  That is a lot of breast milk!  Of course I didn’t have that much!  So I was rescheduled for the end of the week, which in my mind would still not be quite enough time for me to pump that much.  I feed Inez about 8 times a day, maybe 4 to 6 ounces at a time.  When I pump, I get about 8 ounces if I haven’t recently fed her.  When I have fed her, I am lucky to get 2 ounces.

So this was my week:  feed the baby, feed the family, feed myself, pump out milk.  Rinse and repeat.  After about 6 hours of this schedule, I felt exhausted.  I felt like Someone had hit me over the head, or maybe I had the flu, or maybe had run 15 miles but forgotten about it.  

Time for a picture:

This was awful.  If I never have to interact with a breast pump again, I am fine with that.  It is exhausting to have your body feed just one baby.  It is over the top to try to feed and create a future food supply at the same time.  I was baffled thinking that I could drink a whole Nalgene bottle full of water and hope to extract more than that in just a couple days.  How could I possibly put in enough liquid in order to take out that much?  But I did!

Anyway, I did the MRI on Thursday and it wasn’t half bad.  The sounds were horrible, but not as horrible.  Because they only needed to look where my special powers are, it was much, much shorter.  

Inez and I even lived through the 24 hours of no nursing (during which I had to continue to pump out my zombie breast milk and dump it down the drain to infect fishes in the Willamette River).

Science is a wonderful thing, but I am happy to not have to be part of the wonder this week.  I go to have the images read in a week or so.  I’ll let you know if anything is exciting, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

In: Current musings, General bitchin', How strange | | #