MRIs, Neurologists, and Steamcon

So, I had the MRI on Thursday.

They asked me a zillion questions about myself on this questionnaire, including whether I had removable dental work. (I don't, but I have fillings, and a permanent brace on the back of my lower teeth from when I had braces in my teens.) Apparently the MRI is a giant magnet, and just the slightest bit of metal can get ripped right out of you. Comforting thought, huh?

I also have a tube in my tear duct from my eye surgery, and after deliberating with the nurse over whether there was any metal in it (because NO ONE wants that ripped out of their face) she decided to call the doctor who did my surgery and came back with, "It's silicone."

So I was given a long hospital gown and a pair of ridiculously large drawstring pants, then a locker for all of my stuff. I was ushered into a room where I was laid down on a sliding bench, and they put a pair of headphones on me and offered to cover my eyes with a towel after telling me I'd be in there for about forty minutes. I agreed. Then there were all of these clicking sounds, and I didn't open my eyes, but I could tell that my head was being caged in--they don't show that on House.

Then I was being slid in to the large tube, and I heard the nurse talking to me through the speakers in the tube. She asked if I was okay and if I was ready, and though I was scared, I agreed. She warned me about the loud noises, and then there was music in the headphones.

The first few seconds were agonizing as I waited for my fillings to come flying out of my mouth. For my brace to come ripping through my gums. For any other metal randomly in my body that I didn't know about to come shooting out and send me into excruciating pain. There wasn't anything I could do about it; my head was caged in. My eyes were closed and covered, but I knew it anyway. And though I had what appeared to be the end of a turkey baster in my hand as a panic button, it didn't seem like it would be a quick enough reaction if something was torn through my head. So for several tense moments, I just waited, trying to listen to the music over the drumming in my ears.

Then came the noise.

It sounded like a heart monitor. Only the beeps were every second or so. It must be the machine, I realized. It was on. I was tempted to touch my tongue to my brace and my fillings, but I was too scared that they'd cut my tongue off if they were going to come flying out, so I didn't. I remained as motionless as I could, thinking back to all of those episodes of House where they kept telling the patients to sit still.

There were a lot of different sounds throughout the test... Fast high pitch beeps like a heart monitor, low, dull beeps, rapid beeps that came at half-second or faster intervals and sounded like a jackhammer and shook the bed (she warned me about that one, but it was actually my favorite because it was like a massage), loud wails... The sounds were right at my ears and excruciating. The headache I had grew worse.

She came in after a while, stopping the machine first, gave me a shot and asked if I was okay, and then finished up the test in six minutes. (I know, because when she gave me the shot she said, "Only about six minutes left.")

When it was over, I felt a little dizzy and disoriented, but I was glad to be out of the cylinder. I don't think it's something I'll want to do again. Especially after the headache it left me with.

Of course, when I went to the neurologist the next day to talk about my dizziness and the migraines that had sent me to him in the first place, he looked at my MRI results which declared an "abnormality". For ten minutes I waited in total fear while he went to check it out, then came back and showed me pictures of my brain, only to tell me that it was nothing to worry about, probably just an enlarged vein. Yeah... That doesn't worry me at all.

He also told me that he had a colleague who wouldn't treat a patient for migraines until they'd been off of caffeine for at least 6 months, because that was how long it took to get caffeine out of your system (he was trying to convince me to cut back on my abnormally high caffeine intake), and I just smiled, biting back my, "If my doctor said that to me, I'd just find a new doctor."

So now I get to keep a migraine journal, since I'm having them all day every day again. So, yay.

And yesterday my husband and I went to Steamcon. It was... Wow. The costumes those people had put together were incredible. It was really amazing. I was really jealous of a lot of them. And they were very nice, friendly, kind people. The vendor room was this teeny-tiny little room with too many things crammed into it and so little space that you literally bumped into someone wherever you moved, but everyone was conscious of that and trying really hard to apologize to people and not be rude. Not like Disneyland. It was really nice. And they had some amazing corsets... Selling for astronomical prices.

We left after just an hour, though. We were completely out of place there, and sadly, we didn't even have a schedule of events until we were in the car driving home and flipped through the newspaper they had given us in our registration bag. In the fake newspaper were the events, but by that time we were already half-way home. Irritating!

I won't say it was a waste of time, because getting to see it all was cool, but I wish that I'd known what the schedule was before we'd arrived so we could have planned a little better. Also, the layout of the place was very poorly constructed, so we spent a good fifteen minutes wandering around the hotel totally lost. Lame!

I didn't even find any steampunk books... :(