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Had another MRI today. Results sometime in next couple weeks. I’m not particularly concerned.

(No advice, please.)

Details:

My Prostate-Specific Antigen levels continue to be a little high, so my doctor had me get another MRI.

Unlike the one last year, there were no difficulties in scheduling it or in getting pre-approval for it.

But this one was at a different facility than last time. Just before heading off for it, I re-read my writeup of last time, but there ended up being several significant differences this time. So for my own future info, and in case anyone else is curious, here’s my experience this time:

• They told me to leave my shoes on. Last time, they said ahead of time that I would be going in feet-first; I don’t remember whether that turned out to be true or not last time, but this time they put me in head-first.
• (Last time, they told me not to worry about tooth fillings or the wire attached to some of my teeth, specifically because I was going in feet-first. So this time I was a little concerned that I was going in head-first. But just before they put me in the machine, I asked the person who was prepping me about the tooth wire, and they said it would probably be fine.)
• Last time, I was surprised but relieved to discover that they had a magnetic sensor for me to stand in front of ahead of time, to see if there were any problem metal bits that I had forgotten about. This time, I was expecting that they would have me do that, but they didn’t—they relied entirely on my having filled out the form accurately.
• (Speaking of the form: As often seems to happen in medical contexts, they had me fill out the form online ahead of time, indicating what metal things might be in my body, and then they had me fill out nearly the same form again on paper the day of the MRI. I imagine there’s some reason for duplicate form-filling, but it always feels to me like a waste of time.)
• When they brought me into the MRI room, I told them that my N95 mask had a wire in it [edited to add: and so I asked them for a replacement non-wire mask, as a sign in the dressing room had said to do]; they told me that I would be alone in the room so I didn’t need a mask; I said I would prefer to have one anyway; they brought me a surgical mask, so I took off the N95 and put on the surgical mask. Then for the next 10 minutes or so, I was lying on the bed of the MRI machine with two people standing over me and doing stuff in close proximity. (They were also wearing surgical masks.) Not that a surgical mask provides a whole lot of protection, but I was nonetheless glad that I hadn’t gone along with the “you’ll be alone in here” framing.
• Other than that, the main person who was prepping me mostly did a good job—told me at each step what they were going to do and how it would probably feel before they did it, checked in with me repeatedly to make sure everything was OK, etc. I found that soothing. And they didn’t have too much trouble finding a vein for the IV (for pushing contrast into me).
• The one aspect that that person didn’t handle well: they told me repeatedly that I would have some kind of “ball” to squeeze or press a switch on or something, to signal if I needed them to stop for whatever reason, such as coughing. Then they didn’t provide me with such a thing, and I didn’t realize they were starting until they were sliding me into the machine and it was too late to say anything. As it turned out, I was fine, and didn’t need them to stop at any point. But it was unfortunate that they told me they would give me a way to signal and then didn’t.
• Last time, the people who prepped me had me put in earplugs, and then they put some kind of headset over my ears—I don’t think it had any electronics, I think it was just further noise-reduction. This time, they had me put in earplugs (well, they gave me the choice of me doing it or them doing it), but didn’t provide a headset, and didn’t check to see whether the earplugs were firmly in place. Again, it ended up being fine, but I felt like it could easily have been not-fine.
• They were playing music when I went in—a popular catchy Christmas song that I didn’t hear well enough to recognize until I was inside the machine. I listened to maybe two or three minutes of it before the machine started making enough noise to drown it out, so now I’ve got an earworm, yay. (I’m not giving the title here, so that I won’t get earwormed again next time I read this post. You’re welcome, Future Jed!) But after that, the pauses in machine noise weren’t long enough for me to recognize any of the music.
• Sometime around maybe 10 minutes into the process, the machine paused and a distant and kinda mechanical-sounding voice on a loudspeaker somewhere said “Breathe in,” barely audibly to me. I didn’t realize it was addressing me. Then it said “Breathe out,” and I realized these were probably instructions for me, and then it said something like “Breath in and hold your breath” and I did, and the machine started making noise, and they had given no indication of how long I was supposed to hold my breath. But maybe 10 seconds later, the machine noise stopped, and the voice said something like “Resume breathing,” which I was amused by the phrasing of because it kinda made it sound like I had a choice as to whether to continue breathing or not. 🙂 Anyway, that whole sequence repeated about three times in a row. Nothing like that happened in my previous MRI; no idea whether it’s a standard thing or not.
• I came close to dozing off a few times, maybe even did; not sure.
• They had told me upfront that I would be in the machine for about 40 minutes. It didn’t seem particularly long to me; I was slightly tense, but overall reasonably comfortable, and the noise wasn’t too bad.
• At the end of the process, a very brusque person (not the one who had prepped me) got me out of the machine and brusquely yanked half the tape off my arm, causing me to yell “Ow!” as my arm hairs came off with it. The person said something entirely unsympathetic (I forget what, but I think it was something along the lines of “oh, yeah, this hurts”) and then yanked the other half of the tape off. Then they extracted the IV and brusquely told me I could go, and they walked away.

Anyway, it was all fine; none of the problems were a big deal, and I think the whole thing took less than an hour from the time I arrived to the time I left.

The next step would normally be to wait for my doctor to look at the results and get back to me, but it turns out that the urologist who worked with me last time isn’t in-network for my insurance. (At least I think she’s not; my insurance won’t tell me one way or the other unless I submit a claim. But last time, she turned out not to be in-network, and my shift to COBRA seems to have resulted in fewer medical people being in-network, so it seems unlikely that she is.)

So instead, I’m seeing a different urologist at a different medical facility, two weeks from now. It sounds like I may have to go to PAMF in person and pick up a CD-ROM from them with the images on it between now and then; I’ll check with the new urologist and find out exactly what he needs.