Medical Update

I had my MRI a week ago, along with an ultrasound on my liver.

The Ultrasound was no big deal: just lay back and have goo squirted onto your belly. At least they heat the goo up for you! Bryan says when he had one at the urologist’s office they did NOT heat it up first. Anyway, I was not concerned about that test in any way – except to say that the prep for it required me to fast: No Food and No Water for at least 8 hours prior to the test.

No problem. The test was at 9:15 in the morning, so I simply went without my morning cup of tea.

The prep for the MRI, however, was that I should arrive “Well Hydrated” to facilitate the IV process. How exactly am I supposed to be Well Hydrated for this procedure and yet have no water for 8 hours for that procedure?!? I compromised by drinking a LOT of water the four or five days prior to fasting.

It didn’t really work, however. The tech running the MRI machine had the darndest time finding a vein. He tried for a good 15-20 minutes, looking at first this arm and then that arm. At one point, I had a tourniquet tied around both my elbow AND my wrist, hoping to make one appear somewhere in between that was big enough to handle the needle. He finally had to call in his supervisor in hopes that she would have better luck. Eventually they did manage to find one – and she was able to insert the needle with minimal pain or bruising afterwards.

The MRI itself was just horrible, no other way to say it. They were looking at my pituitary gland which is located pretty much dead center of my brain – so I had to have my head in this cradle thingy, with a helmet on that focused the x-rays right exactly where they needed them to be. I was able to wear some earphones with music piped in, so that helped to distract me from the fact that I’m basically tied down onto a conveyor belt and squeezed into a tube just barely big enough to fit my shoulders into. And of course the noise levels are horrendous so I could barely hear the music, even though I had ear muffs on.

Of course, I had a migraine that morning – stress will do that to me every time. One of the weird things about my migraines is that they do not like to lay down. The MRI required that I lay down for at least 45 minutes, as well as deal with with loud noises and tight spaces. I was NOT a happy camper, to say the very least.

Eventually I got to go back home to recover, and ended up having a great day. Surprisingly my doctor called me the very next day with the results – I thought I’d have to wait at least a couple weeks.

MRI = negative, which means no tumor!

Ultrasound = positive, which means … well, heck. I don’t even know what that means.

The results really caught me off guard. I totally expected the reverse! Now I don’t know what to do. I’m supposed to get a phone call soon from a specialist about my liver to find out what’s wrong with it.