My Back Pain - MRI

The nice thing about having a primary care doctor who know me well is that I can call for things and get them without a special visit.  Once I placed the call to request an MRI, my doctor asked me a few questions about what was going on, then she authorized it and wrote up the paperwork.  The MRI was scheduled for September 9 and I was a little freaked out about all the stories I heard about the enclosed space and staying still for so long and how terribly noisy it was in the tube. I didn't care, my foot was numb and I was worried.

When I got to the MRI unit at St. Mary's Hospital, the staff was so nice.  They explained everything well about staying as still as possible.  They gave me headphones to wear which would cut down on the noise and they would pump music in through them (I even had a choice of what I wanted to listen to).  The headphones also served as a vehicle for the staff to communicate to me.  It still was a little freaky to see the headphones and the cords all wrapped in thick plastic tubing because of the pull of the magnet in the MRI unit.  The staff then handed me a panic button (again, wrapped in thick plastic) if I couldn't handle the enclosure.  They told me it would take an hour and we were ready to start. 

I laid there afraid to even breathe in our out.  After I  realized that it wasn't that noisy (yes, there was this constant hammering noise but it was so muffled it wasn't that loud) and the music was starting to sound soothing, I took a deep breath.  They didn't freak out or reprimand me for breathing so I really relaxed after that.  As the table I was on started to gently and slowly move into the machine, I closed my eyes.  It didn't seem terribly long until the technician spoke through the headphones to let me know I was halfway done.  I opened my eyes to see that I was all the way in the machine.  This was really no big deal. 

After I finished I got dressed and went home.  Surprisingly an hour and a half later, my doctor was calling with the results and they were not good.  She didn't want me to go all weekend without knowing.  I had artiritis in my back and apparently it has been there for many years.  It was severe and wide spread.  She explained that back in June, I could have lifted something simple, like a gallon of milk and my back could have popped. That's how back the artiritis was.  Anything could set it off.  She also said that I have a bulging disc between two of my vertebrae which was pinching the nerve in my back making my foot numb.  She gave me the name of a spine specialist and said I should call right away.