Last Minute MRI . com - thanks to a cancellation

I can be very patient with others, but am quite impatient internally. Awaiting appointments makes me nervous. I know I'm not alone in this, I'd sooner get things rolling, no matter how awkward or unpleasant they're going to be. Just when I was worrying that I hadn't been given a date, and was stressing that the MRI was going to interfer with my slotting back into the work training sessions this Thursday, I had a phonecall yesterday. They'd had a cancellation, would I like to go in for an MRI? It had to be done before my MDT results meeting (I now have the date for that too - 19th August) It was an offer I couldn't refuse. So with literally two hours notice, off I toddled to the good ole Royal Berks. Purely by chance, I'd not eaten or drunk anything, so I wasn't in the same predicament of the lady who sent her carer to get her a cuppa, just before the scan. She had to postpone her MRI. Apparently she'd been specifically and emphatically told not to drink anything... half a day's waiting, for nothing. The carer (who had not been given these intructions) was not happy. I hadn't been told not to drink, and was just lucky, I guess. I'm trying to stack up the medical Karma, so when another lady in the waiting room came back with a coffee, I had to warn her what had just happened... She said I'd saved her life. I'm guessing she was exaggerating, but you never can tell... The appointments were running an hour late. I know some people would be quick to jump on this, but I really couldn't complain, I had a reading book with me and I am quite a patient patient. Plus, it had been an emergency case who held up the queue... how on earth could the others moan? I wouldn't have been there if it wasn't for a cancellation... I was just grateful to be getting on with the next part of the diagnostic process. So after reasserting the fact I didn't have any shrapnel wounds, or a pacemaker, and I'd taken out all my piercings (belly button, tongue and ear flesh tunnel, nothing scary 'down there' thank you very much) off I went. Then came another attack of the Next Stage Panic... no tears.. just yet, but I did feel totally overawed by the sight of the biggest Polo mint I'd ever seen. The machine was different to how I'd expected. I'd thought the entrance was a small hole, which opened out into to a bigger chamber, but there was something that made me think of being inside the tiny windows you get in airplanes. I'm not claustrophobic, but it did make me feel a bit anxious. Then the pain started - not the scanning process, but the music they played to me. To be fair, I got my first choice of music options. But had I known POP would mean R+B, (the likes of Mariah Carey, and some guy singing with what sounded like the annoyingly high pitched Chipmonks) I'd have put Classical down as my choice! I almost felt like asking them to turn UP the noises of the scans! It's weird how when you're told to stay very still, you become really aware of every part of your body. I kept feeling I was flinching, but they assured me I didn't move, and I hadn't smudged the scan. It's also weird how erratic your breathing becomes. I know they compensated for breathing in part of the scan, and I was told to breath naturally, but I couldn't help trying to hold my breath in... it made me feel I was being more still... till the slight worry of having to breath again.. Maybe that's why, towards the end of the scan, I started to get emotional. It was really starting to hit me. I was having an MRI. It has initials, which stand for serious big medical words. They give those scans to people who need serious diagnoses. It's quite a serious thing to need to do. OMG. I was having an MRI. I was being diagnosed for Cancer. OMG. OMG. OMG. I came out of there in tears. Now that I was allowed to move and wipe the tears away, they wouldn't stop streaming. I felt really guilty that the next patients waiting for the scan saw me - I didn't want them to panic, I told the nurse to tell them I was just being a girl, and it really wasn't a horrible procedure. I had just had another one of my moments of Next Stage Panic as the reality hits deeper. That was yesterday, 12th August 2008. I don't want to be a cancer patient.