The MRI

So the MRI biopsy turned out great. The process was not that much fun. And since I started this blog in part to maybe give an idea of what cancer and its treatment are like, I thought I'd give it a description. Hope it helps someone.

The facility I went to, Cypress Medical Center, was great. The people were really nice and put me at ease. They weren't great at placing the IV, however. Three days later, and both my forearms are still bruised from where they poked me three or four times.

I went to the same room and MRI machine I'd been in the week before. I had to lie face down on the bench, and there were, for lack of a better description, cupholders. I had to put my arms up over my head. Then they made sure I was positioned correctly and squeezed the cup closed a bit (not as bad as a mammogram, though). Then they slid me into the machine. They ran an MRI on the breast again, and they'd told me if they didn't see anything this time, they wouldn't do the biopsy. That actually gave me a lot of hope. If there was something, they said, the computer would give them coordinates for the needle. The MRI took just a few minutes, and then the techs came back in the room and prepared me for the biopsy. That was a letdown, because obviously that meant they had seen something again.

I got a local anesthetic, so I didn't really feel anything. I mean, I could feel something, but it wasn't painful. Just kind of like being prodded. They inserted the needle, then it was back in the MRI so they could check the position of the needle. That took just a couple minutes. Then they came back in and went to work. There was just some whirring noise -- the needle getting tissue samples -- and that was it. This whole time, I was laying there with my arms streched above my head. It was making me stiff, so I brought my arms down and started to get up, but they stopped me -- I was still "pinned down" with the needle! So I had to wait a bit longer. As I finally did get up, I saw some blood in the "cupholder" and that kind of shook me. Not feeling or seeing anything, it was hard picture what was actually going on (even though deep down I did know). I guess it was just hat visual cue that reminded me what was going on.

Before I could leave, they had to patch me up. I had to lie on my back this time, and they cleaned the blood off me and then put a little "glue" to close the hole, then put one of those plastic "second skin" bandages on. I could shower the next day, they said, but no baths, and after taking the bandage off, I wasn't to scrub at the site for 10 days. When I did take the bandage off, I took a look, and was a little shocked. There's quite a hole there! Maybe it's mostly scab and the glue, but it looks almost a quarter-inch wide. So obviously, I'm not looking at it too much.

All in all, it wasn't horrible for me. But one woman in my support group last night said she wouldn't do an MRI again unless it was absolutely necessary -- with her arthritis, being in the MRI with her arms over her head was too painful. And I could certainly see how that could be. I'm not in too bad a shape, and the 15 or 20 minutes I was in there, it kind of hurt by the time I was done. I'll probably do it again, as the doctors recommend, but I don't know if I'd drive three hours for it again, unless the biopsy were necessary.