The Monday after my diagnosis, I went to Newberg to get a breast MRI. Apparently this would tell them if there were any other suspicious masses in either breast, and it was more reliable than just looking at ultrasound alone. I dreaded that MRI all weekend. I got a prescription for anxiety meds as I could not imagine having to go in this tube and not going completely crazy.
I checked in Monday morning, and walked into the room confident and told myself I could do this. Then I saw the machine and my stomach started doing cartwheels, somersaults, and pretty much everything in me screamed, "I can't do this!" The lady explained the test would be about 35-40 minutes and that the last 10 minutes they would inject a contrast into my IV and I would have to lay perfectly still as that contrast would travel to places in "question". I laid facedown on the table and got as "comfortable" as possible. The nurse set me up with headphones and my selection of music to pass the time. She pushed the tube part way in and because I was facedown I had no real sense of how far in or out of the machine I was. I remember taking a deep breath and thinking, "Alright, I can do this, I can still see a little light from the room and I am not in that far afterall." Boy was I wrong! That nurse said to me, "You doing okay? I'm going to push you the rest of the way in now." Seriously? I was going in further? As she pushed me in that dark tunnel, I felt my pulse quicken and my body sending all sorts of messages to my brain saying "Get me the heck out of here!" It literally felt like I was being pushed into a coffin to be buried alive! (Not that I know what that feels like, but I'm pretty certain it must feel something like this!)
The nurse checked in with me one more time and asked if I was doing okay. "No, I am really not okay", I replied. She had her pep speech all prepared for me and simply replied with, "Well, you are going to have to do it sometime, so we might as well do it today and get it over with. You are going to be okay. Take a couple of deep breaths and try to relax." Sure, try to relax. My heart was beating out of my chest, but soon the music started and I tried to immerse myself in the songs playing. My friend, Beth, had been over the day before and said just keep talking to yourself and tell yourself every minute in there is a minute done and you are closer to having it behind you. I did this and sang in my head to myself. I remember calculating that an average song was probably 3 minutes and I was going to count to about 11 songs and I would be about done. Small problem...when the jackhammer sound starts up when the machine is taking a reading 4-5 minutes at a time, it is pretty hard to HEAR the music. I started making songs up in my head and let myself get lost in a happy place...Hawaii. Our family had planned a trip for almost a year now to go to Hawaii. My dad had left a note for all of us that if anything happened to him at the hospital that he wanted us to go as a family anyway. My mom had struggled with that, and finally was getting to the point of feeling okayish (as okay as we could) about going until my diagnosis blew that trip right out of the water! The real Hawaii will have to wait, but I put myself on that beach and continued my songs in my head during the next 25 minutes or so. Soon the contrast was injected into my IV and I felt myself tense up again. What if I moved, or sneezed, or coughed? I would have gone through all of that 25 minutes for nothing. I spent the next 10 minutes praying that God would just bring peace and quiet to my body....a strange thing to pray for, but whatever got me through the moment! After what felt like an eternity, I was pulled out of the machine and on my way home. Results would not come for likely a few days, so although I had become accustomed to hearing I would have to wait a few days for answers, the waiting did not get any easier.
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