On Friday I had an MRI. This is necessary, it seems, because of a few things. My breast tissue is so dense (and might we say lumpy) that the mammograms we did in November were pretty darned hard to read, and will continue to be so in the future. According to the Gail Model, a statistical tool for assigning you a best-guess risk for breast cancer, my risk – even without any word on genetic status – is 31.3%. The American Cancer Society (I think?) now recommends that anyone with a 20% or higher risk add MRIs to their regular screening methods, so there you go. And, during my recent visit with an oncologist to discuss all of this, she found a couple more lumps that – what the heck – we might as well look at right away. And last but really not least: should my test results come back positive, I will have to make some decisions about surgery, and the MRI will help us determine whether or not I’m clear for takeoff, so to speak – no funny precancerous tissue lurking in my breasts or chest somewhere that needs to be dealt with in the process.

So anyway, there I was face to face with this REALLY huge machine. And it wasn’t that bad at all. I’m not claustrophobic, so that’s a good thing. And they give you headphones with relaxing music while you’re in the tunnel. You’re not even in there the whole time; you’re rolled in and out so they can change your position or add an IV drip with a contrast dye and then send you back in. Maybe the best thing, though, was that the technician was so nice, helpful and reassuring. She took time before the test to explain how it works; she gave me a lozenge and told me she’d always let me know when I could take a moment to cough before she started another image sequence (I’m still getting over a cold and was worried about causing vibrations in there if my throat started to act up!) and answered my concerns about false positives in a way that made perfect sense to me: yes, there are a lot of them with MRIs; in my case, with my risk, the benefits of MRI outweigh the risks of those false positives. We just need to see what’s in there, and this is the most accurate method.

For some reason it struck me as ironic that after all my worry and apprehension, the MRI was no big deal, but then I got hung up in the office over a hive in my eye. Seems that I had an allergic reaction to the contrast dye they used partway through the test. My eye started to itch like crazy and I couldn’t wait to get out of there so I could scratch it! I thought it was just that a hair or something had gotten in my eye, but when I got to the changing room and looked in the mirror, there was a little pocket of swollen skin in the corner of my eye and it was quite red. I figured I’d just ask the nurse if it was normal for people to get an itch or something from the machine, and she promptly sat me down in the waiting room to literally wait it out. Every few minutes she’d check on me, bring me more water to keep flushing the dye out of my system, and peer into my eye to see if it was getting any better. After half an hour, she decided I could go, but not without a new little card for my wallet that declares that I am allergic to Gadolinium. Next time I get an MRI - and I’m sure there will be a next time - they’ll have to give me a Benadryl or even Prednisone before I go in.

You know you’re getting old when your list of drug allergies that you have to write on all those doctors’ forms starts to become an actual list!

Still, for anyone out there who is worried, I found the MRI to be totally nonthreatening. The machine does make an awful lot of whirs, clicks, taps, banging noises and downright LOUD hammering sounds, but you get used to it and overall, it’s actually kind of relaxing. Until the eye starts to itch.