Head MRI: Take 3

Saturday - July 21, 2012

Drenching, pounding rains and intermittent thunder were the soothing baseline for another deep, long, highly-valued sleep.  In the hospital - even in the city - ambient outside noise is rare.  Key exceptions to this norm are the horns of an occasional passing train (always a reassuring sound to me as it harkens back to late nights with my lovely infant in Beijing) and the throbbing beat of the trauma helicopters landing on the VCU helipad (always prompting concern for the patients being transported).  Last night's steady rain against the windows was just what I needed to tempt me into sleep and to restore my sense of calm after my equilibrium had been ruffled by too much surfing on the world wide web....

Dusk snores and "cockroaches" - no internet angst for him!

Internet research is a double-edged sword.  After yesterday's information hunt, I feel decently prepared for Monday's Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) consultation,  However, I was (am?) also rather shaken after getting into the nitty gritty details of BMT, criteria for selection, and of course survival rates.  I have assiduously avoided aggregate survival rate data since my diagnosis, focusing instead on our conversations with my oncologists as well as my optimism and belief in my own underlying health and the aggressiveness and appropriateness of my treatment.  Yesterday's research and preparation put me face-to-face with data that - naturally - did not report 100% survival rates.  Here is a case where my Type A research bent does not serve me well.  So, enough!  Joe persuaded me to take a break and to get out for dinner and a change of focus.... Still, I find it hard to push this data to the back of my mind lickety-split.... A bell cannot be unrung but in time perhaps the sound will fade away  :)



This afternoon is the first of my mid-chemo evaluations.  We are traveling up to Richmond for a follow-up head MRI.  In my first MRI in February, the lymphoma "hot spot" behind my left eye was masked by prednisone and the test was inconclusive, not leading my neuro-ophthalmologist to a definitive conclusion.   Graves Orbitopathy, Trigeminal Neuralgia, a cranial cavernous fistula, and Tolusa-Hunt Syndrome were all debated causes of my crippling symptoms before Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma was diagnosised.  My second head MRI in April was excruciating.  I stupidly went into the loud, piercing, throbbing MRI with my crushing migraine (perhaps a 7 or 8 on the pain scale), not thinking to ask for morphine or some other heavy duty pain killer.  That pain turned out to be worth it as the MRI showed an abnormality between my brain and my left orbit.  My notes of the conversation with my neuro-ophthalmologist read "not a liquid and not a solid mass" but "definitely suggestive of lymphoma." Now, with this third MRI we are hoping to see ... nothing!  Something good has certainly happened behind my left eye, yes?  I can now see (hurrah!) and my migraines have vanished (glory be!) and we are simply awaiting this MRI's confirmation of good news.  We may have the results by Monday's BMT consultation.

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The MRI experience always brings out my number nerdiness.  I tend to count the bangs, clangs, whirrs, snaps, bongs, gongs, and rapid machine gun sounds during the procedure.  How many of each sound occurs between pauses? Is there a pattern?  Growing or repeating?  Is the pause between a change in noise pitch or rhythm the same?  If not, does it change in a predictable manner?  In defense of my confessed number nerdiness, there is precious little to DO during a MRI when your head is encaged in a narrow enclosure and you are further hemmed in by padding and barriers tucked carefully inside the cage.  I am not at all claustrophobic, just a wee bit in need of distraction.  Today, I began to drift from counting MRI sound blasts to wondering about the musical possibilities of these sounds.  After all, the pitches and rhythms vary.  Has anyone ever been inspired by an MRI to compose?  The answer is YES!