April 20

On this day, 10 years ago, my husband and I dropped our then 7 month old daughter off at day care and went to meet my mother at Austin Radiological Association for my first MRI.  I was scared - not of what the MRI would reveal about the mass in my skull - but of the MRI itself.  That seems silly to say at this point (after having repeated MRI's over the past decade), but I was not sure what to expect from the scan or from myself for that matter.  I was asked if I had claustrophobia and I could not answer honestly.  I had never had a reason to have a problem with enclosed spaces, but I had also never been asked to lie completely still, strapped to a narrow gurney in a tube that was disconcertingly coffin shaped.   My boss had plenty of experience with MRI's, having been diagnosed with a tumor on her optic nerve several years prior, and gave me a good idea of what to expect from the machine itself; she told me it would be loud, that the noises would change tone as the machine scanned infinitely tiny slices of my brain and that it would be a very long 45 minutes of moving as little as possible.  What I wasn't sure about was whether or not this would cause me to have some kind of panic attack in the middle of this urgent test. 

When we got to the ARA location, I filled out paperwork again - this time with a little more emphasis on what metals I may or may not have in my body.  I was asked to disclose whether or not I had any tattoos (I did - still do, as a matter of fact) and fillings in my teeth (yes, but just the one).  I hugged my mom, left her sitting in the waiting to make calls to family and walked with my husband to the back, where I changed into a hospital gown.  I, again, stripped off all of my jewelry and my glasses, but this time, I handed it all off to my husband for safekeeping.  I was asked to lie down on the narrow strip of padded plastic while the tech started an IV (because this time, I did not have any choice about the contrast material being injected) and worked on strapping me into position for the MRI.  My head was encased in a plastic cage - I would have found it hard to move, even if I had wanted to.  They warned me to lie as still as possible, asked if I was ready and then pressed the button to move me and my little plastic bed into the MRI machine. 

Now, I won't say that having an MRI is necessarily unpleasant, but for me, it was a little difficult to keep breathing calmly as I was mechanically moved into a metal tube where I could barely see the light of the outside room somewhere in the vicinity of my feet.  Being nearly blind as it is, I found that being divested of my glasses made the world outside my little tube seem overly bright and incredibly fuzzy and disturbingly far away.  I felt isolated and trapped, trying to catch a glimpse of what was going on in the room around me, so I decided to keep my eyes closed and tried to pretend I was taking a nap....strapped down and struggling to keep my breathing under control.  I did as my boss suggested - I listened for the changing tones of the MRI machine which was much louder than I expected.  Those tones were all I could hear and they reverberated through my ears, my head, my entire body.  I changed tactic and decided I would try to assign each tone a different musical genre - there was classical, heavy metal (ha ha), pop.  I managed to distract myself with that and pretending that the vibrations of the machine were a little more like a massage rather than the movements of a giant magnet revolving around me.  It all made me feel just a little bit better, just a little bit more calm.  Just a little bit, but it was enough to get me through that 45 minutes. 

Once I was done, we left and I went on to my office to further distract myself with work.  My doctor called me later in the afternoon (I was seriously expecting a call within hours, but I assumed that MRI's might take longer for the radiologist to review).  I was walking to my car in the parking garage and very calmly listened to her say, "you have a massive tumor pressing on the top of your brain.  It is 9 centimeters by 5 centimeters by 3 centimeters.  Now, we don't know exactly what type of tumor it is, but I am scheduling an appointment with a neurosurgeon for you tomorrow afternoon.  He's the best in Austin.  You need to meet with him to determine the next step in your treatment."  I thanked her and told her that I would wait to hear from her office as to when the appointment would be the following day. 

So, I now knew that I had a brain tumor.  I was starting to feel a little numb - definitely starting to detach from the situation.  At the beginning, that preternatural calm would last for only a short period of time before I would break down and cry.  I knew that the next day would bring more answers and that I could not do anything until I met with the best neurosurgeon that Austin had to offer.  So, I worried a little, I cried a little, I slept a little, I thought a lot.  Mostly I waited to see what the next day would bring.