Like Being Loaded Into A Torpedo Tube

Today, a shortish update.

This week I had my follow-up CT and MRI scans done. The CT was on Monday and done locally. The MRI was on Friday and done in Winnipeg, at the St. Boniface hospital. This is the hospital my surgeon works out of, and he was adamant that the MRI be done there as well. Not sure why! We plan to ask him later.

If you’ve never had a CT scan, allow me to offer a brief description! First you are asked to get down to your undies and socks in a small change area, and put on a hospital gown instead. I’m not thrilled about the gowns because I can never tie them up properly. Then you’re led into the room and made to lay on a table in front of a smallish, ring-shaped machine. The tech starts an IV with a “contrast fluid” that’s meant to make certain parts of you show up more clearly on the imaging. Also, they’ll warn you that it will 1.) make you feel kinda warm and 2.)make you feel like you’ve peed your pants when in fact you have not.

Then they leave the room and the table moves to put the parts that need imaging into the centre of the ring. A pre-recorded voice instructed me when to breathe, hold, and exhale. And in just a few minutes it was done! Really, just when I was settling my mind in for the long haul, so I was quite surprised when the tech re-entered the room and said we were all finished.

No long-term side effects from the contrast fluid, though I was advised to drink plenty of water over the next day or two in order to flush the contrast from my system. I’d meant to take myself out for breakfast that day (to reward myself for being a Big Brave Boy). However, I needed to get back home because my sister-in-law was watching the kids who would otherwise have been unsupervised (not ideal).

If you’ve never had an MRI before, allow me to offer a brief description! It’s a lot like the CT, only the machine is a lot bigger, noisier, dangerous, and slower. Because you see, it works with extremely powerful magnets! I was asked three different times — one paper survey, two nurses — about any potential metals in my body as the result of injuries or implants. It isn’t rational, but I start to worry that I might secretly have metal in my body that I just haven’t remembered (I don’t). The process of preparing and imaging took quite a bit longer, not to mention the drive time. But the nurses were very pleasant and it turns out I have very little problem with confined spaces, so the experience wasn’t particularly stressful.

You have time to let your mind wander in an MRI, and in this one there were two things I really wanted to know, but I’ll sadly never get the answers. One was: how did that small dark smudge get on the inside of the machine? It almost looked like a fingerprint. What was the story there? And the second, which I noticed midway through the imaging, was: how did that tiny ball bearing get there? It was stuck to the inside of the machine because of magnetism, but where is it from? Is it important? Who knows.

In both cases I was assured that my doctors would get the results in less than a week, but I don’t think I’ll know any more until either the chemo doc visit in early February, or meeting the surgeon after that. So we continue to wait and hope for good outcomes. In the meantime, like I’ve said before: we try not to let our minds wander to dark places, and instead do things that bring you calm and joy, like LEGOs.