Scan Day

November 21, 2008

They are done! Scans are over! It was an odd day. It literally felt like scans wouldn’t ever end–eventually, though, they did. We started at 11:45–change clothes, everything off and in place of my clothes, I wear an over-sized wrap around gown with string ties that hangs past my knees. I place my clothes and purse in a locker. Keep the key, but not too close to the magnet. Next, walk down the hall, get the IV. Each step closer to the machine. Each step familiar; way too familiar. Each step, I try to disconnect from the reason I’m here.

The x-ray room itself is always cold. Much to cold to be comfortable. Especially when all you can do to warm up is lay still. Care is taken to get you on the narrow table in exactly the correct position. Then you are literally velcroed to the table. Ear plugs are placed in both ears. This time a heavy shield is placed over my chest and abdomen. Somehow, it measures and tracks my breath and pictures will be taken in sync with the breath. We figured out last time I can hold my breath longer with supplemental oxygen, so I have a cannula on. Slowly, I’m inserted inside the machine.

It’s a small, round, long hole. So narrow inside if your arms are by your sides you cannot bend your elbow to raise your hand; if your arms are over your head you can’t bend them enough to bring them down until they pull you out again. Think of being inserted inside a paper towel tube. I have to close my eyes; it always helps. And then I try to imagine myself somewhere else. When I open my eyes, I see how close the top of the tube is and I can only think of a casket and I quickly push that thought away and then my minds jumps to a drainage ditch tube–not much better. So I close my eyes and I just don’t notice how narrow the tube is. Eyes close and relax, relax.

I imagine I’m on vacation. I’m somewhere everybody wishes they were. It’s somewhere foreign and exotic, somewhere I’ve never been before. I’m laying out in the sand. I let my mind see the blue sky and try to hear the ocean. I hear voices in the back ground and that is other vacationers. I can feel a cool breeze on my face-it’s an ocean breeze. I let the sound of the MRI machine– the loud rhythmic clanking be some native-land drums. Something I have never heard before. I like it here, I can relax. I can be here, in this tube, in this position for a long time. Just don’t open my eyes-stay relaxed.

Today, scans were long. The first batch nearly two hours. Then a CT scans. That is nothing compared to the MRI…. literally, completely over in 60 seconds and it’s a donut–not a tube. After the CT, I have to wait two more hours and go back to the MRI machine. Back to “vacation”, to the ocean, the native drums for another 45 minutes. Then I’m done, finished.

Back to the locker to exchange the loose wrap around gown for my clothes, redress and retract my steps, farther and farther away, back to my car. It’s over and I can go home.

Tonight, I’m curled up at home, close to the fireplace, cozy and warm. Happy to be home and in my familiar setting, happy to be in my own clothes and not on ‘vacation’ anymore. Vacations never last forever.