The MRI Experience ... Part One: Before

The scan is booked for 2:30 this afternoon, and this morning I find myself ... hyper. Couldn't tell you why, because an MRI is absolutely UN-invasive, and the worst you can say for the experience is, it's noisy. They might or might not offer ear protection, so I'm taking my own. They put little kids in MRI machines, fagodsakes, and although I have a couple of phobias, I know I'm not claustrophobic, so...

...so why am I antsy? Probably because of what the scan might reveal, I suppose. For those coming in late, I've been having headaches every day since December 4 last year -- makes over seven months of daily headaches, 95% of them in the same place. Plus an assortment of other symptoms that make an MRI a good idea: make sure there ain't something in this noggin that ought to be taken care of at once, if not sooner (though, seven months after the pain began really doesn't constitute "at once").

The scan isn't what bothers me, honestly. It's the thought of the allopathic treatments to follow, if it turns out there is something in there. All the radio and chemo. Or -- as my father suffered -- the surgery. It's over 30 years since Dad had a brain tumor following lung cancer. By 2000, medicine knew enough that if someone has lung cancer, the next thing they do is scan his/her brain, because that's where cancer metastasizes next.

1985 or so, Dad was lucky -- the tumor was on the outside of his brain, left-hand-side. The surgery was simple: cut a horseshoe-shaped flap of his scalp, take out a disk of bone, lift out the tumor (described to me at the time as exactly like  "lifting an apple out of jelly"), put the disk of bone back into place with gold wire; replace the flap of skin, suture, dress, and ... done. They didn't follow up with any chemo or radio, and he lived 16 years after the surgery before succumbing to  congestive heart failure which was the result of running on one lung for 18 years.

Maybe memories of what Dad went through are making me antsy.

But I find myself hyper this morning. I've been cleaning the house for three hours, and am making myself stop, because I have a headache (duh), and don't feel too good. Exhausting myself will achieve nothing. In fact, it's a daft thing to do.

So here I am blogging about it, to thrash out what I think that I think...

And I think it's this: I usually hate allopathic treatments, drugs and whatnot. Last Christmas, a problem blew up with my gallbladder, and the best orthodox medicine could do was offer to take out my gallbladder in -- oh, a year or two, or three: there's a loooong waiting list for this surgery, since you don't count as an emergency, even though you're in pain.

I didn't want that, so I researched alternative treatments, and by our wedding anniversary dinner in March I was cured. We went out to celebrate the day, and I put the cure to the test by eating fish and chips and cheesecake. No pain; no nothing from the gallbladder. Fixed.

So I think I'm antsy about the MRI, not because I'm anxious regarding the scan itself, but because the thought of all those potential drugs and treatments is getting under my skin like glass powder. Makes your adrenalin pump.

So: calm down, Jen. Do your Taoist breathing exercises. Take some Ashwaganda.

And blog about the actual scan later, when it's been done.