Of course I didn’t stay right there forever. The story couldn’t possibly end there, on the tile floor, next to the baggage carousel at Dulles airport. Despite my protestations about having to move anywhere, my mother did return with both bag and medical records and helped me make my way to her waiting car.
The thing about having a neurologist for nearly your entire life is that when you call for an appointment with your lifetime neurologist and mention that you happen to be flying in from California and that you have most recently been diagnosed as a pregnant AIDS patient with Baby Jesus growing in your cranium, he actually clears his morning and makes time to see you.
We went directly from the airport to Dr. Satinsky’s office. I think he knew just by looking at me that I was not at all well, but he performed all the perfunctory neurological tests with a look of increasingly growing concern. Finally, he turned to my mother and said, “I am uncertain what is wrong with Jennifer, but we’re never going to truly know what is going on in her head without getting her an MRI. The problem is they’re terribly expensive. And, well, she doesn’t have medical insurance.”
It’s no secret that my mother and I have a very interesting and often very dramatic relationship. That we love each other, I think, is never really in question, but liking one another has taken a very long and arduous road to summit. At that point in my life, we were certainly in one of the deeper trenches of misunderstanding that was contributing to the not liking of one another very much at all. So it came as quite a shock, honestly, that my mother blurted out in response to Dr. Satinsky, “I don’t care how much it costs. I’ll pay for it. When can she get the MRI?”
They scheduled me for my MRI for two in the morning. There were actually very few MRI machines in the Washington Metropolitan area in 1989 and the one that could see me first had availability at two a.m. Unlike the doctors before him, Dr. Satinksy insisted we wait to see what the MRI revealed before making any more guesses about what might or might not be going on inside my head. He hugged me and sent me home to my mother’s house to rest.
At one-thirty that morning, my mother and I drove to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda for my very first MRI. Before they would even admit me, my mother got out her checkbook and wrote them a check for $4500. I do believe this is perhaps the most expensive picture ever taken of my brain.
I also want to point out just how very lucky I was (and still am). I had a mother who could write a check for $4500 for a picture of her eldest child’s brain because that is what that child needed that day in order to properly diagnose what was wrong. It is not lost on me just how very blessed I was in those very early morning hours standing there at that counter waiting for the special magnetic image of my brain. If I had not had a mother who could pay, who could easily afford the $4500 for that picture of my brain, I would most certainly have not gotten the MRI that early morning or any morning after and I can also assure you that the story would have ended right here.
So, again, I am one of the very lucky ones. I really am. I have a mother who loves me even when she doesn’t like me very much and who was willing to pay whatever it cost. All of us should be so lucky to have mothers like the mother I am blessed to have.
MRI’s are fairly common place these days and the technology has even improved. That early morning in May, my MRI was like taking a space shuttle ride. Or at least that’s how it felt to me. I was strapped to a table and my entire body was inserted into a very long tube. It was very claustrophobic and it took everything I had not to throw up while I was in my tiny space capsule.
There was lots and lots and lots of loud knocking. It was the knocking that was even more unbearable than the space capsule tube. Around and around with no real rhyme or reason and it caused the Baby Jesus to squirm and scream and I was absolutely certain my head was going to just explode all over that tube into a million tiny little pieces.
Finally, they removed me from the tube and I thought it was all over, but it turned out that they needed to do the whole thing, again, with contrast. They placed an IV in my arm and then injected me with Gadolinium. It’s a dye that burned and caused a huge welt and nasty angry red itchy spot on my arm for nearly a week following.
Back into the tube I went for another round of knocking and banging and more screaming by the Baby Jesus. The Gadolinium also made me really nauseous so it was much harder for me to remain in the tube as I was now starting to throw up into the back of my throat.
“I’ve got to get out!”
“Just a few more minutes, Jennifer…”
“No, I’m choking. Get me out of here!”
“We just need a few more minutes…”
“I’m not going to make it a few more minutes…”
“Please, Jennifer, we’re almost finished…”
“I.NEED.TO.GET.OUT.NOW!”
They stopped the knocking and pulled me out. I rolled to my side and started retching all over the floor. Choking, sputtering, vomit flying everywhere. I was both embarrassed and upset and started to cry.
“I’m so sorry. I can’t do this. The knocking hurts and the dye is making me really hot!”
“We just need a few more clear images, Jennifer. We have to put you back in for just a little while longer. Okay?”
I knew I had to agree. What other choice did I really have?
Plus, my mother had paid for this.
In our family it was an unspoken but very well understood rule that when my mother paid for something, you would not only do it, you would like it and would do it to the best of your ability and get an A+. I also now realize that the unspoken well understood rule was all in my own head, but twenty years ago it was still very much part of my reality.
I was going back in the tube even if it killed me because my mother had paid for it.
So, back I went. Into the tube. Gadolinium lighting up my brain. The technicians got the pictures that they needed and finally pulled me out, cleaned me up and handed me back to my mother who had been patiently waiting for me in the sterile lobby the entire time.
We drove home and waited. We waited some more.
I think Dr. Satinsky called before 7 a.m. It was not good news. Is it ever good news that early in the morning?
What the very expensive picture of my brain had revealed was a series of lesions on my brain. Lesions that could be caused by any series of things.
And a tumor one-fifth the size of my brain.
Baby Jesus had been found.
