Pills and good girls

It was a long week. I’m still recovering and pondering our glorious house concert last Saturday. More of that later. In the meantime I was not particularly looking forward to Friday. Physical therapy in the morning and then an MRI in the afternoon. LATE afternoon, 4 pm. My options had been 6:30 am or 4 pm….should have sucked it up and gone with 6:30 am, damn it.

Physical therapy was great however. He was pleased with my progress and we worked on a new exercise. It did wear me out a bit. We went back home and I fretted nervously about my MRI. My first MRI, years ago, had quickly taught me that I am claustrophobic. From then on I have always gotten Xanax or the like before one. They’ve changed it now so that you don’t get your drug in the clinic before the MRI, instead they prescribe it and you take it at home. So at 3 pm my little timer went off. I pulled out prescription bottle, which was labeled one dose, one pill. Lo and behold there were two pills, two different colors. I was already a tad anxious so I started frantically googling Xanax images but nothing seemed to match up exactly. Eventually I thought, hell, I’ll just take the blue one. Yes, this is reminiscent of my college years. Then I decided that they probably didn’t have the right sized pills so they gave me two to make up the whole dose so I took the peach one too.

At that point it was edging toward 3:15. My handsome driver, Bob, picked me up and we scurried off to the Cancer Center. They took me in early which seemingly was good but in hindsight I realize I should have said no, that I needed the allotted time for the Xanax to kick in. Being the good girl has its downsides so I just went as told. They asked if I wanted music and I said yes. I said John Prine because last time I said Americana and it kept playing Wagon Wheel. They popped the headphones on me and slid me in. I couldn’t hear a damn thing from the headphones. At one point I said out loud, “I can’t hear the music,” but got no response. It was the hardest MRI I’ve ever had. I tried to focus on my breathing and not open my eyes but it didn’t really help. It wasn’t that long although I had no sense of that at the time. I kept telling myself to think of something else but my mind wouldn’t budge. I had hold of the little emergency button but I knew if I pushed it I would have to do the damn thing again. I was sweating like crazy and tense as hell.

It was not fun.

At all.

Even thinking about it now makes me tense up. Oh, and I couldn’t bring my walker into the room so they just kinda let me toddle in and out. And they said the ear phones worked fine, they must have just been drowned out by the machine. Except that I couldn’t hear it even when the machine was silent. Eh, not A team material overall.

Bob got me home and the Xanax finally kicked in fully. Ernie made a beautiful dinner (true summertime meal of grilled chicken, leftover coleslaw, garden tomatoes and green beans) for me as I tried to stay awake but not long after I was off to bed.