This afternoon I cycled through the wind and rain to have the second MRI in five days. Before I left home, I took a zoloft that was three years past its expiration date, the last one of the small supply I was given for future MRI examinations after the spinal surgery in January 2017. Inside the white tunnel, I hummed my songs and called up images of my daughter's birthdays from age 1 to 12. The wind had grown stronger by the time I was finished and I pushed the bicycle through the swirling leaves to the whole food shop where I bought a vast supply of chocolate and a bottle of lavender woolen softener before cycling down to the river. By now it had started to rain heavily and I decided to shrug off the couldn't-care-less from the zoloft and go home, make tea and eat chocolate. I haven't eaten chocolate for ages.
The third meeting with a medical expert is in two days time. I am pretending to be cheerful. I haven't got what it takes quite yet. It's all up in the air. But heavens!, please no surgery, please no!
Chocolate is an excellent way to treat oneself. I always keep emergency chocolate in the house.
ReplyDeleteI hope things go well and there is no surgery in your future.
You've been in my thoughts, Sabine. I'll say it, too. Please no surgery. Your bicycle ride has inspired me to go walking on this windy rainy day after I send this message. The fall color here is not yet at its peak but lovely nonetheless. Thank you for another introduction to a singer I may not have heard of otherwise.
ReplyDeleteI've missed you here in the blogosphere. oh yes, please no surgery. my afib has settled back down, the medication is doing it's job and the imminent ablation is once again on the back burner.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to join in the mantra of "please no surgery, please no!" As always, I'm hoping for the best for you.
ReplyDeleteI, too, have been thinking about you- wondering how you are.
ReplyDeleteI have to say that if I was going for my second MRI in five days I would have taken more than an aged Zoloft and I would have demanded that my husband drive me there.
You are strong, lady. You humble me.
Thinking of you, Sabine.
ReplyDeleteHope all went well at the doctor appointment. Hoping for no surgery. Take care there, Sabine.
ReplyDeleteRiding your bike to the MRI is impressive to me. The Zoloft couldn't-care-less seems to have offered a lovely break in the proceedings, even with the rain. Tea and chocolate inside a cozy house doesn't sound half bad either. I hope no surgery, dear Sabine.
ReplyDeleteIt's good to hear from you, Sabine! YES, my fingers are also crossed for no surgery!
ReplyDeleteZoloft helps with MRI's? I didn't know it was effective as a prn drug. But I'm glad it helped you and hope no surgery is required.
ReplyDeleteIf you are like me and get claustrophobic inside the MRI, you can have a choice of three here: 1. ask for iv valium, which is micro dosed and just lasts for the 45 mins, leaving me with a headache for the next 24 hrs, 2. ask your GP for something else which in my case were three zoloft tablets, the only three I have ever taken in my life or 3. grin and bear it/freak out/beg to be pulled out after five mins.
DeleteTo clarify: the three zoloft were taken one at a time for three MRI sessions over the last five years.
DeleteNo! No surgeries honey. No.
ReplyDeleteOn a journalistic tour of Japan back in the eighties I finagled a visit to one of those super space-saver hotels where patrons are stored in tubes like torpedoes in a submarine. Many of the questions that arose were ribald and went unasked.
ReplyDeleteThere were faint echoes of that experience when I was body-scanned two or three months ago here in Hereford. I have in my youth done a certain amount of caving and knew that when the dimensions (of the cave's gaps) shrink to a certain point, claustrophobia seems only just around the corner. I was determined to be hairy-chested at the hospital but was undermined by carelessness on the part of the scanner's operatives. My wrist was catheterised to admit scanning fluid but the catheter was not correctly aligned with the direction of the vein; there was a small arch between the metal and the tissue and the slight pain at the start grew and grew during the 40 minutes of my intubation. Each booming hollow-voiced announcement from the machine informed me of the length (in time) of the next scan session; having just borne ten minutes I seriously doubted whether I could now endure 15 minutes.
I was equipped with a panic-button. Alone and in agony I wondered at what point I might crack and bring shame down on the house of Roderick. There was the realisation that I was attempting to intellectualise the event, to detach myself from the source of the pain, to imagine it was happening to someone else. I'd wondered about that over the years and can categorically say it doesn't.
Eventually it was over. I was a mere sweat-soaked rag, incapable of even sensing relief, let along complaining. In a week I'm due the reverse of the endoscopy I wrote about several years ago and am told there will be a doctor on hand with ready analgesic. My feeling are, as they say, mixed.
I have had a couple of MRIs though was not experiencing any physical pain to complicate matters. The calming music could not always be heard. I concentrated on counting the time for each announced segment, a thousand and one, a thousand and two, to a thousand and 60; marked a minute with one finger, then started the next minute, etc. -- devising a system to track each of the segments. This kept all other thoughts out of my mind. That's not to say the matter was easy and the entire duration of mine may not have been as long as yours since I don't recall now, but it was my head.
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