MRI Birthday

So I had my birthday, (yay!) but had an MRI first thing on my birthday morning (sucky) and generally my birthday rolled by not feeling at all like a birthday. I don't know the last time I had a medical appointment free birthday. Because of the overwhelming pain in my hip I stopped doing any activity and the pain went down. I managed to walk 10 minutes after my MRI and ended up in a bit of pain from it but not as bad as usual.

I kept off my hip and then after a few weeks the pain went away. Within that time I had gone into a thrift store and contemplated buying a set of crutches but decided to wait until I had the MRI. By the next week the pain was almost completely gone.

They stuffed me into the giant machine and played ABBA for me while the imaging was taking place.

Here is my fancy 'before' picture with me in the hospital robe.

She put me on the narrow little bed and it moved into place and then I was raised so that my nose was inches from the top of the inside. She put the headphones on me and told me it wouldn't be a long one, just 20 minutes. For the first time in my life I panicked. I pulled off my headphones to call out that I was feeling claustrophobic but it turned out she had been walking into the booth and didn't hear me. I calmed down and popped the headphones back on and stayed as still as possible. I missed her instructions that she had relayed to me over the headphones but I was glad that she missed my little panic episode.

I'm not really sure what came over me, I think I've just filled my personal lifetime quota for being in large machines, getting my insides looked at. This has just been enough already. When I headed home, trying to not let the stress overtake me, I wandered through the neighborhood coffee house. I'm not a coffee drinker but I felt like I needed a distraction.

This particular coffee shop has a really nice, bubbly girl in there who seems to remember me for some reason. I went in, made my order and she asked me about my day. I told her it was my birthday AND my MRI day. She happily made my iced mocha (with a shot of hazelnut) and told me it was a gift.


I can't tell you how much that meant to me on that lonely morning. I had the weight of wondering what the hell was wrong with me. I had to wait 4 days for the results. As I was in that machine, feeling the humming and sound vibrations going through my hip, I kept saying, "Please find out what's wrong, please see what's wrong, please see what's wrong", to myself or maybe to the machine.

On the Friday at my oncology appointment I was told they saw nothing but a healthy hip. The relief washed over me at the same time as, 'what the hell?'. Add a little dash of, am I crazy? and that was my initial feelings of finding out my hip was in tact.

This doctor was not the one who I saw last time and she ran through all the same questions that the last one did. After some thinking, she suggested it may be a pinched nerve in my back. I thought that was ludicrous that that much pain could come from a pinched nerve but then I got to thinking. My uber healthy/active/young grandmother has been laid out with a nerve problem in her back. And truthfully, I can't really tell what the pain is. It feels deep within my hip but it also radiates down my leg and sometimes into the knee.

I was given a requisition to have my back x-rayed but I tossed it. I have been poked and prodded to no end. My back has been x-rayed more times than I can count when the doctors were unable to give me lumbar punctures. Each subsequent lumbar puncture was done with a series of x-rays. I've had enough. I have done everything my doctors have asked and I will get that next x-ray if they insist.

At the moment the pain is gone (whoohoo!) but I also haven't been walking or exercising at all which is terribly, terribly bad. I had a good week and a half until another wave of fatigue hit me and now I have the flu. I'm starting to feel very down about my prospects at building a normal life.

Halloween is my favourite day of the year and I wasn't able to go out. After 4 years I wonder if this cycle will ever end.

Well, after writing this depressing post I'm going to take this sad sick body out for a walk in the sunshine.

Sweet Ride & My MRI

Bah humbug!

That sums up how I've been feeling. I'm really looking forward to my MRI, I'm also hoping it's just a hairline fracture. I said that to someone today and realized how absurd that sounds, hoping that my hip has a fracture. It's seriously better than the alternatives, though.

So, as pumped as I am about getting the MRI, it really sucks that it's on my birthday. Why can't they leave my birthday alone! It's been 4 years since I had a non medically infringed upon birthday.

I'm so very grateful that it's getting done but the constant pain is a lot to deal with. Sorry I haven't been overly responsive to the comments the last little bit. I'm just barely keeping it together at times.

The stress I'm having about my hip unfortunately sets off hot flashes from the chemotherapy induced menopause and the stress also makes the graft/vs/host flare which makes the stress worse. I can actually feel my entire emotional and physical being, simultaneously combusting. I'm such a bundle of fun.

Currently I am plotting to have a gang buster year with my hip if it's suffering the slow death. I'm likely (hopefully) jumping the gun thinking about needing a hip replacement at this point but this pain is just so deep and constant. It makes it hard to concentrate, walk, sleep, drive or sit. But pain or no pain, if it's avascular necrosis, my hip and I are going to go dancing, bike riding and anything else I can think of that my hip would like to do before it dies.

Let's just say my hip would probably have a bucket list if it knew it's days were cut short, it's certainly not going without a fight.

As terrible as the news would be, and if there is nothing that can be done, might as well make it a sweet ride going down.

MRI Me, Baby!

I have my important gallery opening tonight where they're going to pat me on the back for my photo but all I can seem to do today is stress. I'm meeting some friends later and my son who are coming with me to the opening and I should be excited. I'm sure I'll have a lot of fun.

The problem is I have a long awaited appointment today with an oncologist. I've been doing well and had graduated from having to travel to Vancouver all of the time. This doctor is coming here because we don't have any bone marrow specialists here on the island. I'm lucky that I only have to have these appointments every 6 months now. Traveling to them before was such a huge chunk of my life and I had it all down to a fine science.

Seeing him/her here and the fact that it's someone I don't know is making me feel like a fish out of water. Especially because there are problems.

When I go see him/her I need to discuss the problems with my joints and let him know that I need an MRI asap. My GP is worried about my hip pain and so am I. It has eased off a little pain wise but it's still there. Because the x-ray was inconclusive they need to look inside of me to see what's going on.

MRI me baby.