Last week I had an MRI (adding to my first-hand investigations of the tests I see every week on House). I can now report that MRIs are loud and long and every once in a while they hit some nerve or other that make your hands tingle like you’ve just hit both your funny bones. Lying still for 40-ish minutes is hard. Lying still that long with your eyes closed (as directed by the technician) with strange loud noises coming from all directions can lead to disorientation. Sometimes it sounds like a jackhammer, sometimes like the machine is being whacked with crowbars, and sometimes like a landing alien space ship. Also, it apparently doesn’t matter if you have metal on you unless it’s very close to the part of you that’s being scanned. I could wear jeans, for example, since they were scanning my head. This was a surprise.
All in all, it’s not painful or anything, but it thoroughly wiped me out. Thoroughly. Utterly.
A few days later I went to see my doctor who gave me the news that I do not have any visible abnormalities in my brain, and specifically that I do not have MS. Good news for sure. (She also told me that there’s nothing left to test for, which wasn’t so much fun to hear.) When she handed me the radiologist’s report, though, I had to smile.
MRI BRAIN WITH AND WITHOUT CONTRAST
CLINICAL HISTORY: Generalized muscle weakness, coldness, fatigue
TECHNIQUE: Images of brain obtained using non-contrast sagittal T1, agittal FLAIR, axial T1, axial FLAIR, axialdiffusion, post-gadolinium contrast axial and coronal T1 weighted sequences. l4 mL Magnevist contrast agent was utilized.
FINDINGS: Brain is normal in signal intensity. There is no hydrocephalus, mass effect or midline shift. There is no abnormal subdural collection. Diffusion weighted images show no evidence of acute infarction. Flow voids are present in the internal carotid and basilar arteries. Brainstem and cerebellum are normal. Orbits and paranasal sinuses are normal. Post-contrast images are normal.
CONCLUSION: Normal brain.
Ok. All those things that I don’t understand may be true, but that conclusion … The radiologist clearly doesn’t know me very well.
Hi. I came to your blog from a search on hyperempathy, then found all this about your health problems which seem so very similar to my husband's. They thought Lyme, they thought MS, but everything was clean. It's been six months. Anyway, I enjoy your writing and it's kind of comforting to know he's not alone in his health trials.
Oh I'm very sorry to hear that your husband is dealing with something similar, Meg. It's an incredibly frustrating situation to be in. I hope your husband starts feeling better soon, whether or not the doctors can figure it out.