Well, I went to the hospital this morning. They were running around 45 minutes late. They took me into a change room (I only needed to remove my coat & shoes - had no metal), ran over the questions again. No, I've never been a welder. But, thanks for being thorough!
The lady said that they would slide me out of the oven (ok, my words, no hers) 1/2 way through to baste me with galidium in order to provide contrast for the MRI.
I went into the room with a large, circular donut sticking out its tongue. I lay down on the tongue and they put a pillow under my knees, put my head in a cage and slid me into the oven. As I was going in I thought "my God, this is a tight fit!". I'm not the claustrophobic type. I looked up and the mirror allowed me to see the room and they had dim lights running on either side of the donut hole, like they have in planes. I was pretty comfortable, stretched my arms out at my side and felt pretty good. In the mirror I could see a reflection of the machine from the window at the end of the room. I could see the digital timer (in reverse) on the front of the machine, so when it counted down from 5 minutes, I knew how much longer it would be.
They did a quick scan of 30 seconds, I think it's "defrost" mode. It wasn't as loud as I thought it would be. I had earplugs in. It sounded like a loud buzzer to me, kind of like a fire alarm. The buzzer had a couple of different tones - higher and lower frequencies.
I could see the attendants running around the room screaming, "Oh my God, he's going to die!" and the radiologist finally giving them a slap and saying that it was only a test pattern. Ok, they didn't, but I wanted to see if you were still reading.
The waited about 10 minutes and then did a 2 minute scan. After a couple minutes longer they did a 5 minute scan, then a 7 minute scan and then a 30 second scan.
During the 7 minute scan, the buzzing got to a very low frequency, and you'll think I'm crazy, but I could feel my head getting warm. It was below my right ear and down to the center of my neck. Has anyone else experienced this? That's where the AN is suspected. I wonder if the little bast*rd was kicking up a fuss, or just because it was the targeted area that it was receiving more magnetic activity? Seriously, though, the base of my head felt warm for about 2 hours afterwards.
The technician came, slid me out of the oven and said that I was done. I asked her if they were going to use the contrast medium and she said No, keeping very busy. I asked why and she said sometimes they use it, sometimes they don't. They didn't need to use it for me. I asked if that meant that they saw something and she said "I'm not a radiologist, I just take the images." She got quite snotty with me at this point. I tried to be friendly, and asked her if it wasn't standard practice to use the contrast medium, and was puzzled why they didn't need to. She picked up the paper I was laying on, walked over to the door and threw it out and told me to throw out the earplugs before I left. I asked how long it would take for the report and she said that by the time the radiologist reviewed it, it would be 2 weeks before I heard anything.
Now, here's my dilemma. If the report comes back that they didn't find an AN, then I'm not going to have a lot of faith in it. How do you know without using the bleedin' contrast medium? I don't want to have to wait another 2 weeks to get the report, then 3 weeks to have it done with contrast, then 2 weeks to get that report. Arrrgh!
However, I suspect that the reason they didn't need to use the contrast medium (and, in my mind, the only logical reason why they wouldn't use it) is because they could see it without. If they did the MRI w/o the medium, saw the AN, then why would they need to use it? You wouldn't need to have it injected into your system, they wouldn't need to have to cost of it, and they wouldn't need to tie up the machine for another 1/2 hour. That seems logical. If you lose your car keys and then find them, you don't keep looking. "Oh, here they are in the living room. Better check the bedroom just in case."
I guess that's my thought. If they didn't find it, why would they not continue? Doesn't make sense. If they found it, why continue? That makes sense.
So, in my frazzled state right now, I can only assume that they found it.
John
