Thoughts inside an MRI machine

The first thing you need to know is that I'm claustrophobic. It's a fun phobia to have, because it manifests itself in all kinds of weird ways. It's not just that I hate small, enclosed spaces - it's that I can't breathe when I am in them, and thus the fear turns into a panic attack, and a panic attack spirals into a full on respiratory emergency these days, what with my compromised lungs and all. So, you know, I do my best to not jump into coffins or elevators or airplanes and whatever. But sometimes, the small, enclosed spaces come to you, and you have no choice.

That would be the MRI machine. I tried to smuggle my phone in to take pictures, but they're really, really strict about what's allowed in the MRI room, because the MRI is basically a GIGANTIC magnet, and so anything with metal or anything affected by magnets aren't allowed in the room. Hell, I'm not even allowed into the super high powered MRI because I have a copper IUD (sorry if that's TMI, but it's in the name of science, so suck it up, buttercup)! Anyway. For a long time, they would check out what's going on under the hood via CT scans (also known as CAT scans - but this is a misnomer. There are no cats. Nothing is fuzzy and warm. No purring.). But, after a fun allergic reaction to the CT contrast (It had been a long time coming, actually), I wasn't allowed to get CTs with contrast anymore, because, well, the whole point of treatment is to keep me alive as long as possible. And so the MRI's arrived. 

If you've never been in an MRI machine, here's what I can tell you about them, based on the many MRI's I have experienced. They are like tunnels. If you were a toddler and had a lot of cool (non-metal) Matchbox cars? These would be SWEET places to hang, because they remind me of the Eisenhower Tunnel. You could send tiny cars through there all day and well into the night, when you would fall asleep, face down, drooling onto some piece of expensive equipment. But! If you are not a small car or a very small child, the MRI feels small. I am only 5' 2", and although I have an impressive rack (my husband made me write that), I am not a big person. I am a small person. And yet I am very aware of the parameters of this machine. Once they layer several exoskeletons on you (to make sure you don't move) and then a nice warm blanket (because the MRI room is always about zero degrees Kelvin), there's not a lot of room to spare. My nose, which is NOT large, almost touches the top of the tunnel. I really don't think my husband, who is over six feet tall and pretty fit, would fit into this machine with all of the stuff! So it's a claustrophobic setting and then a truly claustrophobic experience. Not only are you stuffed inside the machine like you're the filling of a cannoli, but you're also attacked with noise. And I mean LOUD LOUD noise. Sometimes, it sounds like you're in a big garbage can and you're tumbling down the hill with a bunch of rocks. Other times, I'm pretty sure it sounds like you're being shot at while you're inside a tank. And then there are the ones that sound the way you suspect the alarms sounded when Three Mile Island had its crisis - all that's missing are the flashing red strobe lights and people running pell-mell up and down various hallways. Oh, and before the noises start, they ask you to take a breath and hold your breath for, I dunno, forever. So I hope you don't startle easily. 

I had to have my chest, abdomen and pelvis all imaged this week. This took about 2 hours, which was pretty fast. The technicians were efficient, kind, and helpful. Kristi, who was in charge of the imaging, even came out and helped me when I had to complain that the oxygen cannula was choking me somehow (and wouldn't THAT be the most ironic way to die, ever?).  There's not much to do in there but think about things - after all, you can't even twiddle your thumbs. You just have to lie there and try and hold your breath. And don't think too much about how much longer you might have to hold your breath, because that, of course, just makes you panic that you're going to have to hold it FOREVER and then you just can't even do it for one nanosecond longer and so you breathe and it ruins the image and they have to do portions all over again. And don't think about how you have to pee, or how you have an itchy spot on your nose. Basically, I just try to treat the whole thing like a really long savasana, which works fairly well until I remember that savasana actually means "corpse pose," and I creep myself out completely. 

Today, to help distract me, though, I had MUSIC! They always give me noise-cancelling (well, noise-sorta-muffling-a-little-bit) earphones, to help make sure that even if my other major systems are failing, I can still hear well, but I'd never been offered the chance to listen to music. So exciting!  They said it was Pandora and I could choose whomever I wanted. I really wanted The Lumineers but the woman asking me...I didn't know if she would have heard of them. So I asked for Simon and Garfunkel.  Mellow, endearing, good old Simon and Garfunkel. Which was great, until Pandora shifted into sad song mode and Simon and Garfunkel took a hiatus and in their place, I got to listen to hits such as "Yesterday," "Your Song," "Piano Man," "Landslide," and "Eleanor Rigby." Now, don't get me wrong: I'm a Beatles fan and an Elton John fan and who doesn't like Fleetwood Mac? But those songs are all pretty much tied for the most depressing songs in the fucking world, especially when you're already at full boil wondering if there are new cancerous lesions sneaking around inside your body.  You're not allowed to move around at all inside the machine, and my arms were conveniently pinned to my sides with the aforementioned plastic and velcro covers to make sure I didn't move anyway, so the tears just kind of dripped conveniently into my ear, which was really fun and didn't tickle or make me want to scream at ALL. But yeah. Maybe no Simon and Garfunkel next time.

After two hours, I hopped out (well, sort of unfolded myself and hobbled out, because lying still for that long is a bit painful) and drove home. And then the waiting commenced. These were the first scans since I started my clinical trial, and I'd been told that since immunotherapies take longer to start working than chemotherapy (since chemo just pours lots of toxic chemicals in and hopes that they will kill more cancer cells than regular cells, while immunotherapies have to sort of set up camp and direct the body to pay attention to things it has been ignoring), the potential for significant growth of my existing lesions was possible at this point. And so I went home and I waited and waited and read the same three paragraphs of my book over and over and tried not to jump out of my skin. Sort of like I'm going to make you wait now. But tune in tomorrow for what (I hope will be) an exciting update!