I'm Done! With Galaga

So I'm back home, having just been MRI-ed and otherwise traumatized. But interestingly, the MRI wasn't the majority of the trauma.

Yesterday's post, as you might remember, briefly discussed my anxiety over the MRI and its possible (but not probable) bad results. Shortly after writing that, in the 13.5 minutes when all three children were sleeping at the same time, I had a rather frightening "attack" of....something? The numbness in my face spread up higher than it ever had (up to my nose), and my fingers grew numb. This was followed by a rather robust headache within half an hour, which although uncomfortable, was, honestly, reassuring, as this is much more "migraine-like" than "scary stuff" like. I called the doctor, who seemed relatively settled that I wasn't having a stroke. After all, both sides of my mouth went up when I smiled! Yet despite the power of my symmetrical smile, I felt out of commission for most of the day.

So while I managed to get some knitting done and the dishwasher loaded (ACCOMPLISHMENT!), I spent most of yesterday being a slug. That night around dinner time, Cole started complaining about an earache. That is *never* good, and *always* means that an ear infection is brewing. Neither of my black market pediatricians -- ie, my ped. friends from whom I can mooch information and services -- have/can find their otoscopes, so one of these kind souls called in a prescription for a lidocaine solution meant specifically for the ears so that if this was what I thought it was, we wouldn't be up all night.

Well, we were up all night anyway.

Poor Cole was absolutely miserable. Just beside himself, really. He cried and thrashed and tossed and turned, pawing miserably at that left ear that just won't stop giving him trouble. By this morning he complained of trouble breathing. Where I had been content to see if the ear infection would resolve itself without a trip to the doctor, I was not so content with pneumonia (which he had 4 weeks ago), and we coasted into the doctor's office at 9:45, the earliest they could get us in.

Keep in mind that a babysitter was originally supposed to come at 10, and I was supposed to be at the hospital for the MRI at 11: 15.

The doctor's office moved surprisingly quickly, and after finding that Cole had double ear infections, and Micah had one too ( a very bad one, it turns out!), we left with prescriptions for three ears and two boys. We cut across the street to Target for what should have been a quick in and out prescription filling event, and I even told the pharmacist that we were in a terrible hurry and that if the meds couldn't be filled promptly we would go somewhere else -- that was fine, we just needed to know up front. I was assured that we would be in and out the door in 15 minutes.

So 25 minutes later we finally get the drugs, and I'm approaching a frantic state because the babysitter, who was waiting at our house, was 15 minutes away, and it was 11:00. And I had to be at the hospital at 11:15. In other words, best case scenario I would be 15 minutes late. So I called the babysitter, who met us at the hospital, and who took the kids to a nearby shopping center to feed and otherwise amuse them (I *love* good babysitters....*love* *love* *love*). And with that, having relinquished car keys, children, and vehicle, I went inside to get zapped.

The problem was that the receptionist checking outpatient people in was sloooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwww as molasses, so slow that she was still working on the same woman 25 minutes after I walked in. I attempted to remain calm and un-grumbly about this until the MRI people started calling down to her to ask if I was there. After all, I was supposed to be with them. Not to hold a grudge or anything, but I could have made it home from Target, fed the children, cleaned the house, planted some annual seeds, stood around to watch them sprout, and then made it back in plenty of time before she finally got to me. By then it was almost noon. And by then I remembered that in my rush to get Cole to the doctor, I had forgotten to eat. This might explain why I felt a headache coming on. Or maybe it was that I hadn't slept?

So after I was "processed"at the speed of a turtle, and had a hospital band placed around my arm (I really hate those. They induce such a patient mentality by their very presence), I went back to radiology. Where they reminded me that I would be having an injection of a chemical dye to make the contrast on the MRI better. Which is not compatible with nursing.

Are you kidding me? Could this have been mentioned BEFORE HAND?

So after I clarify with the radiologist how long this stuff stays in my system, and come up with a plan to hold off Micah for 24 hours, and look suitably grumpy over that lack of shared information, and then apologize for said grumpiness, explaining that my son was up all night with an earache, and then stood and wondered to myself whether I should have apologized, I entered the MRI room itself.

I'm telling you. It's exhausting to be me.

Happily, this MRI machine was much shorter than the one that I was in 10 years ago -- that one encompassed my entire body in a tube that made me pray and bargain with deities. But this didn't look nearly as bad. Next I was asked whether I wanted music, or earplugs? The MRI machine is, after all, extremely loud.

Here I was caught in a horrible catch-22, for the earplugs could easily give the feeling of being squeezed, confined; at the very least they could exacerbate the pressure that was in my head from the headache I had brewing. And believe me, when you're already facing being stuck in a tube, you don'twant multiple layers of other sorts of squeezing going on. On the other hand, music? What if it was too loud? Or just *awful*? She explained that the music choices weren't great, but here's the list that I remember:

Big Band
Frank Sinatra
Counting Crows
Tim McGraw
Enya
Johnny Cash

Quite an eclectic bunch, don't you think? I voted Enya.

What I did not know at that moment was that the Enya recording they were using was one that a friend had copied from another friend's mom from two separate cassette tapes that were partially unwound in 1985 but that someone had managed to put back together with a pencil and some ingenuity in 1986. So my muffly-Enya-d self was pushed into the tube. And by golly, it seems that either I was deaf during my previous MRI, or all of the claustrophobic anxiety caused me to completely forget the sound.

THE. SOUND.

You know, i'm sort of glad for the sound, because it was such a bizarre experience that I spent most of my time in the tube thinking about how I might describe it to you. Really. Words that come to mind include "air horn/air raid", "jackhammer" "construction in your house while you're trying to sleep", and my favorite "every sound from Galaga, happening right inside your head."

Here's what it was like:
~~~~~~~enya~~~~~~~ (muffled) sail away, sail away, sail away ~~~~~~~enya (static)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
JACK HAMMER! WAKE UP! THERE'S A BOMB COMING! AND WE'RE TEARING DOWN THE WALL! JACK HAMMER! DUCK! YOU'RE BEING SHOT AT WITH COMPUTER GRAPHICS! ~~~~~~~~~~(static) enya~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After this interesting auditory experience, I entered the Galaga free world, to find, waiting in the parking lot, the lovely babysitter Lindsey with my three children. The two whose ears hurt looked like they'd been shot, but their spirits were decent. The third, who was scheming how she might get me to purchase a personalized diary for her that she'd seen while out with Lindsey, peppered me with questions about how much money she had saved, and how she thought such a purchase just *might* be feasible!

And with that, life went on.