MRI Friday Night

We don't have any interpretations of the MRI findings from last night.

Didn't think we would, since today is Saturday. But I think that on Monday, we might get a call with results.

Short summary: We drove to Winston Salem last night, strangely late for a medical procedure: The MRI was at 8:15 pm. Weird, eh? Didn't get home till midnight. That's LATE for us!

Bill went in alone--sometimes I go with him, but Emma was here and helped us drive over and back, so she and I sat in the waiting room.

(I got a little bit scolded by some of the people in the waiting room, because I was showing Emma my new $9 cell phone from WalMart, that has 300 minutes, and works for 2 months. You get a new phone number with every phone. So this lady across the aisle starts remarking about how cheap that is, and I said, yes, I found out about these phones because of reading that the terrorists use them, so their calls can't be traced, and therefore I call it my Jihad Phone. I thought that was funny, but the people in the waiting room all felt that they should suddenly pour forth unsolicited commentary, to the effect that I shouldn't be using words like that in public. I said to one lady, "Well, you can look at me and tell I'm not a terrorist, right?" Honestly? She looked at me like maybe she wasn't sure she COULD tell that. So when I got home, my other daughter, Sarah, heard the story and said, "Mom! You should never say those words in public! You need to go OUT more so you will know what the RULES are!" hahahaha Well, whatdya know. My vocabulary has now shrunk by two words.)

Anyway, the MRI took about an hour, and all the people coming out before Bill were talking about how much they threw up, and couldn't stop throwing up from the dye, and how their heads hurt. That rendered me scared to death about what Bill was experiencing.

But finally, about 9:30, he came out, bandaids and tape and cotton and plastic ID bracelets stuck all over him, and said he hadn't thrown up, but he looked like he just stepped out of a rodeo on the wrong side of a bad pony. He look just whipped. He did get nauseated, and he said it was very difficult to hold his breath for 20 seconds at a time, with very little breathing time in between. Things like that.

The machine completely encloses you, so that there is a space of mere inches between your face or body and the machine. It's very cold in the machine, but they put a heated blanket on you. Bill liked that. And part of the magnets' working requires extremely loud metallic banging. Then there are sirens and other strange very loud noises. Bill said they gave him earplugs, but that was pointless, given the loudness of the noises.

We don't know how much of his body was scanned, but they said they were focusing on his liver, obviously.

So now that two of the children are here, our lives will be hyper for a couple of days, so I won't post on Sunday.

But I will post anything we hear, good or bad, within minutes of getting the call--hoping it's on Monday.

And I hope they do call, and don't make us wait till next Friday when we meet with Dr. Perry Shen.

Thank you for thinking of us, and caring, and continuing to read this story!

We love you.

B&B
PS: Jihad phone. See? I'm incorrigible.