ct scan and mri

I hobbled to my primary care doctor's office to get a referral for the MRI today and met my friend Amy at the coffeeshop across the street from his office. Amy drove me to Methodist Hospital for the tests. She pulled up in the back and grabbed me a wheelchair.

My first test was the MRI. It was in the trailer outside the building; I'd never had an MRI at that one before. I explained my knee's lack of mobility to the technician and we tried to find an acceptable position for me to be in during the exam. After the first few minutes, my leg started to throb. It got worse and tears started to come to my eyes. I pressed the "emergency" button to ask how much longer. I thought it was maybe halfway through the test, not 5 minutes into it. The technician said to try to stay in the test. I did try, but a few minutes later, my foot started to get hot. Really hot. Like it was burning. The searing sensation lapped up my leg and I became hysterical. I cried so hard that the technician stopped the test. I think he lifted off the apparatus on my knee and carried me off the machine into the wheelchair before I calmed down. I felt terribly embarrassed and my leg hurt (though the burning stopped after the apparatus came off). The technician wheeled me out of the trailer and up to the 2nd floor of the hospital. He even got me crackers and juice, as my lack of eating (because of the tests) probably contributed to the hysteria.

When I got upstairs and registered for the second test, a nurse brought me a fairly bad-tasting milkshake to drink to coat my insides so that they'd show up on the CT scan. Then she brought me back to a room to start an IV. I told her that during surgery it took 9 tries to get the anesthesia needle in; she said that she wouldn't even try and called for a nurse to hook up my IV with an ultrasound. It took her 20 minutes, a shot of Lidocaine (to numb me), and lots of warm blankets (to help get the blood flowing) to get a vein in my upper arm. The needle left a giant ugly bruise, but it cheerfully only took her one try. The scan itself only took a few minutes. Afterwards, my friend Tony picked me up. We got lunch before he brought me home.

Needle count: 59
Touch count: 20