This post is going to be short and, if not sweet, then I’ll aim for mildly amusing. I may fail on both those fronts.
Back in January (it’s all back in January) as part of my pre-surgery diagnostics I had a MRI and more details on what entailed can be found in my post here. I met with my consultant and he told me that my PET-CT and MRI showed lots of cancerous activity in my cervix. Awesome. The words every woman wants to hear.
But they performed surgery and I entered the world of being in remission.
This has proven to be an interesting and often frustrating part of the overall journey. I use interesting here but really, I should be highlighting ‘frustrating’ in red and maximising out the font size to 72 but then it would look like this:
As part of the remission process they will occasionally do more MRI scans. How often they do these, I don’t know. I had an appointment with my consultant in June and he told me that they would arrange for me to have my MRI the following month.
July passed. No MRI appointment. August passed. No MRI appointment. Then finally, a letter!
No, sorry. Not that one.
A rather less exciting one had arrived from the Diagnostic Imaging Centre at The Royal Surrey Hospital, which informed me that I was booked in to have a MRI scan and that I would need to arrange a blood test with my doctors. It also told me that I would not be able to proceed with said scan until the bloodwork results had arrived.
They sent this via regular post and not owl so the letter arrived on a Thursday. They wanted me to have the MRI the following Friday. There was a bank holiday in between. Somehow, I needed to get a blood test in that time. And of course….
Now I need to learn the art of assertiveness because I clearly fail at that also. I contacted my doctor’s surgery and spoke to a receptionist who point blank refused me an appointment the following week because, as she told me, there weren’t any available.
“But,” I said. “I really need that appointment because I’m due to have a MRI next Friday and they won’t let me have a scan without the blood results.”
Nope. That lady was colder than the iceberg that sank the Titanic. I was not getting an appointment and that was that.
No appointment with the doctor meant no MRI scan and I had to call up the Diagnostic Imaging Centre who admonished me for not being able to attend and, as I was told, ‘these are very important and I should be attending them.’
I just….
I know I need to attend these. Oddly, even though I don’t want to attend these, I actually want to attend these. That doesn’t make any sense I know.
The hospital gave me five minutes notice over a bank holiday weekend to somehow get a doctor’s appointment that would allow them to get blood results back for me to have my MRI for five working days’ time. In England??!! Are they not aware of what GP surgeries are like in this country?
Advice I received (I will not disclose by whom, ahem, my mother) was, “Ger, MAKE the receptionists give you an appointment.” I began to counter-argue when she said, “Did you not tell them what it was for? Did you not tell them you are a cancer remission patient?” No, no I did not. I suppose if there is ever a time to get pushy with GP receptionists is when you can play the C-card to your advantage.
Still, I let it slide. I don’t know what the rules are for GP surgeries and remission patients and I don’t know if receptionist just try and ‘block’ the ones that they think aren’t important but I should have been more assertive about it.
Someone I know used to be a GP receptionist in a local surgery in Northern Ireland and she said that their system has a ‘flag’ approach, so if anyone was ever a cancer patient than their record is flagged and they get priority. I guess I don’t know enough about the way it works over here.
Still, I managed to re-arrange my MRI and finally got a GP appointment booked and, I cannot stress this enough, I asked for a doctor because I needed: –
I reiterated on how much I hated MRI’s and there was no way I was going through the Tunnel of Doom without sweet sweet sedation. Except I made myself sound like way less of a potential addict then I am here. The receptionist (who I am now sure hates my guts) assured me it was all booked in.
I rocked up to the GP’s to find a nurse waiting for me to take my blood. “Erm,” I said to her. “Can you do me a prescription for a sedative as well as take my bloods?”
No, was the answer. No, she could not.
The sound of your own thundering heart in your ears is in no way relaxing.
The nurse handled my uprising panic with a gentle yet authoritative calm. Thank you, nurse. The hysterical pitching of someone standing in front of you begging for their sedatives is probably not a wonderfully relaxing start to an appointment yet she did well to push down my rising Renton (Trainspotting reference, if you didn’t know) and spoke to the receptionist on my behalf.
“After I’ve taken your bloods,” she told me, “go to reception and make a telephone appointment for your prescription. I’ve spoken to Doctor X and they have told me this will be absolutely fine for you to do.”
Doctor X is not really that doctor’s real name… just in case you didn’t know. I’ve changed names to protect the innocent.
Eventually I managed to get my telephone appointment, my prescription and my sedatives but not after one final conversation with a shitty receptionist who couldn’t help but get shitty with me.
I don’t know if I had the misfortune to deal with the same grotty receptionist or a collective union of receptionists who decided to be grotty but c’mon… you barely see me for years and then when I need to make important appointments I get discarded like an old sweet wrapper.
Say it again, Merida…
As for the MRI itself it was pretty much the same as last time. I’m assuming anyway, I was significantly more off my face last time.
The Diagnostic Imaging Centre is the one where I had my PET-CT so going back was familiar and in some ways, oddly comforting. The staff there are lovely and the only downside was that Huw wasn’t allowed in with me this time to randomly tap on my head in a comforting manner.
The other downside was that I took my diazepam a little later than last time which meant I was a bit more cognitive going into the machine than I would have liked to be. I tried not to look at the machine but I’ll tell you it’s a bit hard when it sits like some massive beast in the middle of the room.
Erm. Yeah, I can’t draw. That MRI looks way more penisey than it should do. Sorry.
Not that I can remember, what with my memory not being that good and all, but I imagine a MRI is like the birth canal. You are in a compressed space where you can’t move at all and you are being pushed down a tube. There is a bright light surrounding you, there’s movement and a lot of noise.
Before the sedative kicked in I was terrified and seconds away from pressing the panic button. The radiographer spoke over the headphones and made me do lots of deep, controlled breathing which calmed me down enough before the drugs were fully absorbed into my bloodstream.
Sing it, Ed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIJHg1XWR7o
My doped-up brain managed to turn the noises of the machine into some German metal band melody which somehow worked.
I now look at new-born babies with a degree of pity and empathy. No wonder they are crying so hysterically when they come out, do you think there’s a panic button up by the cervix? Do you?! They have no clue what’s going on and if people stick with the ‘gas and air’ approach I just don’t think that’s enough to take the edge off the poor baby. They also haven’t heard of Rammstein yet so they can’t even compose German metal band symphonies.
I understand you now new-born babies. It’s ok, I get it.
After my MRI I had a lovely doped-up lunch while I exclaimed to all and sundry that I loved diazepam. I mean I was telling the waitress I loved diazepam. Huw was less than impressed, but he’ll just have to get over that… won’t he diazepam?
https://atyourcervixuk.wordpress.com/blog/
