MRI

Repetition and/of Grief

Deb Zuroski, , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

The repetition is reassuring. “Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in and hold your breath.” After the first experience of having my liver scanned–I had confessed my nerves to the technician–he asked me how I felt. I told him the first breath is the hardest. You don’t know how long you’ll be holding it. Lying in a shallow cylinder filled with very loud noise and muffled, tinny music, seconds feel like minutes. Once the rhythm of the process is clear, it’s not difficult. The repetition feels like a test that you’re smashing. Yes! I held my breath. I kept still as a statue. Now, I can breathe again (for a moment, before the “breathe in” recording recycles). 

Keeping still is essential or they have to stop and restart the scan. One time, I cried but stayed completely still. The tears were silent as they rolled down the sides of my face into my ears and onto my neck. The technician asked if I was okay, if I wanted to stop. I said, “No. I’m okay.” And we kept at it. He didn’t say anything about it at the end, didn’t comment as I carefully wiped the tear stains with the edge of my hospital gown. We all have to wear two, one as a gown and one as a jacket, with a pair of ugly, ill-fitting, hospital pants. Today, they offered me a heated blanket, which I took happily. They blow cold air into that narrow tube. It’s hard to stay still when you start to shiver. 

The contrast burns just a little. It’s cold, running through the tube on my arm and wrapped around my thumb (to keep the tube from catching in the machinery and getting yanked out of my arm). This is my favorite part, not the mildly uncomfortable sensation but the chilly, stinging knowledge that we’re five minutes from the end of the scan. I don’t hate that narrow tube but I do hate what it represents. Now, the wait begins. This is the worst part, the worry, the anticipation, the sour-tasting hope. What will the scans reveal? 

I arrived home oddly tired, from the stress, and determined, as usual, not to think about the wait, not to watch for the notification that I have test results in my medical chart. Two of the contractors repairing the leak in my bathroom came into the kitchen as I emptied the dishwasher. They use the microwave every day to warm up lunch–a homemade taco bowl for one, meatballs in red sauce for the other. We always spend a few moments talking: one has a baby due next month and momma-to-be is at that stage of pregnancy where nothing is comfortable. The other is a foodie. We compared experiences eating Indian food and he told me about a Nigerian place he’s going to try soon. It’s far south of me, closer to Washington, PA so I probably won’t get there.  

They’re silent about the scans, of course. But one of the other contractors fusses, offering to move his vehicle so I can park closer to the house. He’s mournful, pitying, which always feels incredibly uncomfortable. They all know about the cancer because I joked with the GC one day that I’m going to have a nice tub before I die. I’m not dying but awareness matters. The life insurance company won’t insure me until I hit the five year mark–they know the score and so do I.

One of my nieces and I are planning a hiking trip to the Isle of Man, 100 miles around the whole of the island. The hike is called the Raad ny Foillan–pronounced rad na foil yan–the Way of the Gull. I’m hoping we’ll convince the family to go with us, at least for part of the trip. I think my dad would appreciate the idea of all of us visiting the homeland together, though I’ll acknowledge that I rarely act in ways that would please my father. Still, this is a trip I’d love to make. Something about it calls, like I’m a salmon rushing to get upstream. 

Construction work is nearly complete on my unexpected bathroom renovation. I was planning only to repair the shower. Then, when the GC pointed out the obvious, that I’d have to replace the shower tile, I realized that I’d also have to do something about the matching tile with which the previous owner lined the entire bathroom, including the built-in jet tub that I hate with the fire of a thousand suns. I’m not re-tiling the outside of that bathtub, I’m replacing it. You see what happened, right? From there, it was only a short jump to replacing the useless jack-and-jill sinks with a smaller vanity and STORAGE. This is how one starts with a minor repair and ends up with a renovation. 

I’ll admit to a moment or two of panic as the workers carried bag after bag of my former bathroom out of the house. The only reno I’ve ever done is DIY. This has been an adventure in learning new strategies and new coping mechanisms. They have taught me much about efficiency and tidiness while working. And laughter. There’s been something delightful about listening to the plumbers giggle together. Not so much the noises four men made as they carried my new freestanding, and very heavy, tub up two flights of stairs…those sounds feature in my nightmares. 

Early in the project, one of the young men, not quite an apprentice but definitely not a grizzled icon of construction work, slipped and fell through the newly floor-less bathroom, leaving a foot-shaped hole in the second floor bedroom ceiling. He wasn’t hurt. That’s the most important thing. He was CHAGRINED and has very gracefully endured my teasing ever since. He’s also done a great job on the repair, including repainting the entire ceiling because the sheen on the new gallon of paint didn’t match the original (even though we had the empty can to take to Sherwin Williams). File that under unsolved mysteries! 

It’s theoretically possible that I’ll be showering in my new bathroom this weekend. I sure hope I don’t hate the experience because I’m never doing it again. Maybe to the other bathrooms? If I do any more renovations, the kitchen is probably next. Some maniac former owner decided that the cupboards should be painted with floor stain, probably because they knew they were leaving a mess for a future owner. The floor stain is a misery–a curse on their gardens for the struggle they left with us. They also added cheap storage at the ceiling level that I was initially excited about. All the love to that naive younger version of myself, the one who thought she wouldn’t hate having to get out the step ladder every single time she needs something from those cupboards, which has proven to be way more frequently than the younger version of myself anticipated. 

After nearly a month with this group of contractors, I have affection for some, tolerance for one, and appreciation for another. I’ve gotten to know the individual sounds of their voices, their footsteps. I have inside jokes with the GC and talk to the apprentice like he’s my son (he doesn’t seem to mind having been “adopted” by me). They’ll leave at the end of the day today and it’s possible I’ll never see any of them again. I won’t hear about the birth of the baby next month, won’t know about the foodie’s latest obsession, won’t get the update of life after the move into a new apartment in two weeks, won’t hear the incredibly loud belching (which I’m not sorry to leave behind). Life is filled with these little bereavements. Ships passing in the night, the cliche calls it. 

But it’s more than that. Just as I’ve made room in my life for them, they too have created a world around this job. I suspect they do it with every project, moving their things in: a hoodie draped over the banister, house shoes by the front door for bad weather days, a ladder left in the second floor room after the ceiling repair. I found a construction pencil by the basement deep sink and a roll of blue tape at the top of the stairs. They’re incredibly tidy but also comfortable in the space, which feels very warm. I love to hear their feet pounding down the steps as they run outside to get something from the truck and their voices as they call to each other–a joke, a request, a question. 

The house will be quiet when they’re gone. Even the dogs will stop their barking.

Much love.

Repetition and/of Grief

Scanning for Fear or the Fear of Scans

Deb Zuroski, , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

I allowed scan-xiety to get the better of me. 

Most cancer patients – in news that will surprise absolutely no one – experience some level of scan-xiety. We remind ourselves not to worry. We deep-breathe before our appointments and sweat out the wait for our results. Some of us have nightmares. Some don’t sleep well for days before their scans. We bargain with ourselves and our gods, hoping against rational thought that our pleas will ensure that this latest scan will be clear. 

For a variety of health reasons that are not cancer-related, I have had many scans over the past 20 years and never really worried about them, until that first time, in December, 2023. Since then, I’ve had five or six additional MRIs (and that’s without counting the extra two I got in September). I’ve sort of lost count from the monotonous sameness of the experience, though, if I cared to, I could go back through my electronic record and count the results. 

The facts show, without elaboration, that I don’t currently have cancer. My liver resection and chemotherapy eliminated it. So, how did I allow scan-xiety to take over, to control my waking hours, my sleepless nights, my infrequent dreams? I honestly don’t know, though, clearly, I’m not alone in that experience. 

Part of me wants to blame my VeryBadCancerTM with its high (70-80%) recurrence rate but that isn’t fair to the many people with more common and more treatable cancers. They, too, experience the gripping anticipatory grief of scan-xiety. We’re a large and growing population of individuals who both hope and dread those quarterly, semi-annual, or annual scans. 

Every single time I get an MRI, I analyze the technicians’ behaviors, even knowing that they are not foreshadowing my future. Why, I ask myself, did the tech tell me that they hoped I’d feel better soon? I feel fine. Oh my god. What did they see on the scan? TAKE CARE? Why did they say that? It’s back, isn’t it? They’re wishing me well because they saw another growth. 

It’s relentless – the imagined pity, the casual humanity turned to sympathy by my overactive brain. It wasn’t so bad in September. Having just finished chemo, I assumed that the cancer would be, at least temporarily, beaten down. Something about these most recent scans, though, took hold of my psyche, shook me to my essence, encouraged me to dread, instead of hope.

Again, my scans were fine. I’m still hanging in, cancer-free, but it – the scan-xiety – cost me this time in a way that I need to remember. It cost me moments of joy and peaceful nights. It cost me in snapping, anxious words and absences when I should have been present. 

I am determined not to pay that high price again but it is so much easier to profess that goal than to apply it. The strategies are all in my scan-xiety avoidance toolkit: yoga, mindful breathing, therapy, exercise. The problem, you see, is that, like most people, I, and so many other cancer survivors, have a lot to lose. The difference between us and the average healthy person is that we have experienced the real possibility of an earlier than expected death. But, to quote Cordelia, “I think I like this little life, this silly little life.” 

It isn’t just the pain and discomfort of surgery and chemo and possibly radiation that frightens me. I’ve done that before – well, not the radiation. I know what to expect – even from the radiation, having watched my husband endure it – and I know I can do it again and again, even the vomiting, if I have to. It’s not the words that could be in any of our futures: incurable, inoperable, terminal, palliative. 

It’s the pain to be endured by my children, my extended family, my found family and friends – but most horribly AGAIN by my children – that really makes me fear my scans. My (adult) babies are strong and they love each other deeply. I know that, if, through some future scan, I receive my ‘notice to quit’, my children will support each other, will be ‘okay’ but I would give a lot to prevent them from enduring another parental cancer death. 

It’s a lot to ask and I’m not sure who, in fact, I would be asking since I’ve been, previously, very clear on my uncomfortable relationship with the possibility of an all-powerful deity who occasionally pops down to help you find your pen but allows a lot of kind, gentle, loving people to die of cancer every year. 

With all due respect to your beliefs, please miss me with the “God needs them” and “they were called home” business. I hope those thoughts comfort believers but they offer nothing to me when compared to the idea of my children having to stand by my bed, watching cholangiocarcinoma turn me yellow and poison my blood. I don’t know if God was present in the room when my husband gasped out his last. 

I do know, though, that my children were there, at Ken’s beside, and they suffered – and still suffer – from the experience of watching their father die after watching him fight to live. Since none of us know what the future holds for us, I am determined to embrace the lesson that this scan’s anxious moments taught me – I need not die before I’ve finished living. 

Much love.

Scanning for Fear or the Fear of Scans

I Thought I Was Olive Oyl

Deb Zuroski, , , , , , , , Leave a comment

I’m sitting next to a black lab puppy at the coffee shop. He’s being a good boy so I can’t pet him, which is a cruel, cruel fact of training one’s puppy. Still, I get to look at his delightful face so I can’t really complain. 

There’s a group of women directly behind me who are having a very girl-talk discussion of their relationships and it is MESSY. One of them just said she can’t wait for her frontal lobe to develop. (Same, girl) It’s very clear that they’re having far more robust sexual lives than I did at their age. Hehe Anyway, I am exhausted just from eavesdropping.

Want to hear the story of my scans earlier this week? After accidentally going to the hospital instead of their outpatient facility two blocks away, I got an MRI with and without contrast. I should have known it wouldn’t go well, given the awkward start. (First I accidentally went to the Cardiac MRI unit at the hospital, then I waited for 30 minutes to get checked in – which made me 15 minutes late even before I walked all the way back to the parking garage, drove two blocks, parked in another garage and went to the third floor of the outpatient center.) According to the staff, this happens a lot, which makes me think they need to work for a solution since we patients are too stupid to do it right. 

Anyway, I had my MRI. If you’ve never gotten contrast, let me tell you that you can feel contrast enter your bloodstream; it’s cold. So, when my MRI was done, I pointed out that I hadn’t felt the contrast, you know, in case they’d forgotten to do it. Well, guess what? They’d accidentally closed the IV connector on my arm and since it didn’t form a seal, the contrast leaked everywhere (and left quite a welt on my arm too). They cleaned off the whole MRI bed and we did round two. Luckily for me, I only had to repeat about half of it since the non-contrast MRI had been successful. 

We’re not done yet …. Usually, the tech announces when they add the contrast. Instead, I knew I was getting the contrast in my arm because it burned like a hot match held to my flesh. Burned and burned and burned. Meanwhile, I’m going through the announced instructions to hold my breath, and breath normally, and hold my breath, and breath normally. I’m trying not to pant while this stupid contrast is – in my head – stripping the flesh from my body. Then, suddenly, it’s over. The bed slides out of the MRI and I tell the technician that I didn’t know the contrast hurts because it never did before. 

Friends, it isn’t supposed to hurt. The IV needle was through my vein and pouring 10 ccs of contrast into my bicep, which had ballooned into a football. The tech called the radiologist who, after quickly checking the scans, said, despite the oopsie, enough contrast had gotten into my system. No need to do a third MRI. We all had a good laugh about my Popeye arm and I went back to the garage, back to the hospital, into their garage, and then down to the correct radiology unit for my CT. 

Again, my friends, we aren’t finished. I arrive in the waiting room and someone comes up to me: “Ms Zuroski?” That’s weird. Right? I say as much and the staff person tells me they’ve received multiple phone calls about me. About me? Yes, because, upon a second review, the radiologist determined that there wasn’t enough contrast and I needed a third MRI. Lol

Before that, they did my CT. Then, three – true story – three radiologists came in to look at my well-inflated football arm and determined that I would, in fact, survive to experience another MRI. And so I did. They had a hard time finding a working vein so I have a few extra holes in me today but overall it was a remarkably amusing experience. Sadly, my arm has since deflated. Perhaps I’ll try Popeye’s solution and eat a couple bags of spinach.

Don’t ask because I won’t have results for maybe 10 days. There’s a radiologist shortage. I’ll let you know the news when I know the news. 

Much love.

I Thought I Was Olive Oyl