...never again to tell you that anything frightens me.
Because I sure as hell wouldn’t appreciate having my fears dismissed merely because whatever I’m nervous about doesn’t scare you. People who tell me stuff like that don’t get to be around me when I’m feeling vulnerable. They can still be my friends, but I will stop showing them all of who I am, since apparently they judge me as somehow inferior for having a fear or fears that they don’t happen to share. and the last thing I think is helpful when I’m vulnerable is to be judged for it.
Your MRI was your MRI. Mine – which also wasn’t difficult for me – was mine. Jamie’s was not yours or mine: it was Jamie’s. On top of being anxious about the results and about the test itself (because he knew going into it that he has sometimes had trouble in tightly enclosed spaces), the guy’s in constant pain – not to mention seriously sleep-deprived. I cut him a lot of slack for that alone.
Had someone accompanied him to the MRI, he could have been sedated for it, which might have allowed him to get through it.
Me, I’ve been sedated for every colonscopy I’ve ever had.
And I wish I’d been massively sedated for the abdominal CT scan I had to have a week before the surgery last December. As it was, when I learned (minutes before the test) exactly what was going to be expected of me – and that I’d have to endure this particularly hellish experience without even mild sedation (because I had to remain conscious in order to retain the several litres of contrast dye that was going to be piped into my inflamed nether regions) – I fell completely apart. And I do mean completely.
Weeks of pain and sleep deprivation and bleeding from the bowels had thoroughly shredded my ordinary pluckiness. Unlike other CT scans I’d had (those were on my head and neck, and required that the dye be injected only into my veins), this procedure was going to be excruciating.
More pain was not what I needed, and on top of that, it was clear that if I wasn’t able to bear the ratcheting-up of that pain for long enough to get good film, the whole nightmare would need to be repeated before I could have surgery. So added to the anxiety I was already feeling about the upcoming surgery (for which I could at least expect to be anesthetized), the anxiety about this painful procedure totally overwhelmed me.
I sobbed, I pleaded for there to be another way to get this information, I hyperventilated, I begged for more time to prepare myself, I clung to the gurney railing and to the hand of the dear friend who’d accompanied me to the imaging suite. Fortunately, that friend is an Earth Mother type who knows just how to comfort and support a terrified child – for that’s certainly what I turned into. The technician was also extremely compassionate, patiently answering my plaintive questions and never once pooh-poohing my fear.
It took a solid 10 or 15 minutes for me to recover enough self-control to proceed.
I got through it, but only by the skin of my teeth. And even though I didn’t have to get up and go home afterward – I just got wheeled out into the hallway to await the orderly who’d fetch me back up to my hospital room on the gurney – I was still deeply grateful that my friend was there to keep me company as I shivered in the aftermath of the whole hideous experience. Never for a nanosecond did she indicate that she thought there was anything shameful or silly about the way I’d behaved.
Do I wish I’d been able to be more stoic? Sure. My meltdown certainly didn’t make the test any easier. But I had the feelings I had. And I didn’t have the emotional or physical wherewithal to keep a stiff upper lip in my shock and dismay. (I’d had no warning about what this test would entail. Had I known, I could have done at least some of that weeping and wailing beforehand, and maybe used some other anti-anxiety techniques that have helped me in the past.)
As for Jamie’s appointment this past Monday, when he expected to hear the results of this round of testing, I completely understand his wanting someone to accompany him on such a visit.
Several years back, when I went for a pre-op consultation with the surgeon who was going to do my hysterectomy, I was flanked (and not just in the waiting room, but inside the examining room itself) by not one, but two friends. I’d have been fine with only one, but by a fluke, two were available and wanted to come along in case the surgeon had bad news for me about the tests I’d just had. (There was a growth on one of my ovaries roughly the size of a softball, and we didn’t yet know whether it was benign.)
Similarly, when another friend went to hear the results of a test that would tell her whether she has the gene for Huntington’s Disease – currently a guarantee that she’d die a slow, grisly death from that ghastly neurogenerative disease (which had killed her grandfather, uncle, mother, brother, and cousin), I was one of two people who went with her.
People who are told deeply scary stuff in doctor’s offices are at considerable risk of “tuning out” much of the rest of the conversation, as the information echos around inside their head and they begin their struggle to process it.
In fact, when I escort a friend to an appointment like that, I bring a tape recorder in case I, too, am so shocked and distressed that I miss something important.
