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Thursday, February 28, 2008

This is only a test...

I know I haven't been posting much lately, but what can I say? Maybe my kids have just been perfect little angels, leaving me no material to add to the blog. That, or I'm so busy with the 4 kids that I can't find time for much of anything. I'm thinking it's the latter. Yesterday was an interesting day, however, and I had an experience that I found to be "blogworthy".
Last week I had an appointment with my cardiologist (for those of you who know me, this is just routine maintenance, not really much to get all worked up about) because she wanted to see how everything looked post baby. No surprise, she wasn't able to see everything she wanted/needed to see on the echo screen since my heart is so dyscombobulated, flipped, twisted, and to put it simply, messed up. I went home last Tuesday wearing yet another 24 hour monitor (which I'm 99% sure the tech put on backwards, in the first place, but don't even get me started on that...) and looking forward (ugh) to a phone call to set up an MRI. Well, yesterday was the day. I had my first (at least that I or my mom could remember...) cardiac MRI. We woke up (We, including Aubrey) bright and early to be ready to leave the house by 6:30 am. (Aubrey came over to watch the kids, and was so nice to not make us wake them up to take them over to her house. Thanks again, by the way:) We got to the hospital about 15 minutes early, and filled out paperwork. Gotta tell ya, when you're filling out a questionairre that asks things like "have you ever been struck with a metal object i.e. a bullet, or shrapnal" it can really freak a person out. I started worrying that there could be some metal object I just couldn't recall somewhere in or on my body, and I would end up really hurt. You know how your mind can play tricks on you. So, I go back to the little room, with the really nice MRI tech guy, all the while checking with him again, that my surgical metal would not create a problem. This is about the time I'm informed that my test was a very specialized test, and would take approximately 2 HOURS! 2 hours! You can probably guess what I'm thinking now... Oh dear, what's going to happen when the large drink I had on my way to the appointment kicks in? Do they allow potty breaks? I'm just glad that I had thought enough in advance to wear my yoga pants. Wasn't really looking forward to the prospect of a "draft", and opted out of my usual jeans (that contain metal...). To make a long story short, or shortER, I got situated, the guy put extra sticky things for the cardiac leads on my chest, just so he could make sure he had them in all the right places for my messed up heart. He put earplugs in my ears because his machine is "a little noisy, kinda sounds like a jackhammer". I go in the tube, and I THOUGHT I would get to just nap for 2 hours. No such luck. Every couple of minutes he would say: "Deep breath in, blow it out, deep breath in, blow it out, okay now STOP BREATHING." I would then hold my breath for what seemed like a minute, but was probably only about 25 seconds each time. While I was "not breathing" the machine would make noises that I can only describe as reminiscent of that of the test from the Emergency Broadcast System. Sometimes the thing I was lying on would move forward or backwards, and then I would hear loud clicking like someone was banging on a computer keyboard. Anyway, when all was said and done I had been in the tube for just shy of 2 hours, and the tech and my cardiologist were apparently satisfied with the pictures they got. I'll get the results of them at or before my appointment in June. I'll keep ya'll posted. Oh, and just a note: Soni was a great baby during the whole thing and didn't give Cameron any grief while they were waiting in the little room outside.

1 comments:

beckyjune said...

Sami, I can so relate to the not-having-any-extra-time-because of the kids-thing. What a woman you are! I only have 3 and don't know when I'll be up for the next one.

We're anxious to see how the tests come back and hope all is well.