I haven’t been in to see my neurologist in almost two years. Which is a good thing! It means my MS remains in remission and that two-year MRI and neuro check are just a maintenance effort at this point.
I did wonder if something was amiss this spring, as my eye has a regular twitch it didn’t have before, and optic nerve worries and spasming muscles can point to disease progression.
I was super tired all the say there (drowsy driving was a thing on my way in… it was terrible!) and looked forward to—I kid you not—falling asleep in the MRI cylinder.
Most people do not fall asleep in the MRI cylinder.
It’s loud in there, so loud that we are given ear plugs and noise-cancelling earphones which deliver the music of our choice to drown out the bangs, whirrs, and clunks coming from the magnets in the machine.
But I started to use relaxation tricks a while back to guard against claustrophobia, a common problem among people with MS who are already in sensory overload. It led to me falling asleep.
I also ask to be wrapped “like a burrito” which warm blankets tucked all around my body in a comforting swaddle, and I have them place a washcloth over my eyes so I don’t see anything at all.
Yesterday’s scan also came with a lavender mist. This is new! Apparently they started doing this as a kind of relaxation strategy.
I didn’t need the lavender to help me fall asleep—I was practically asleep just waiting for them to install me into the machine—but I accepted the offer anyway because it’s LAVENDER.
(I have a dozen or so lavender bushes in my yard, which explains everything.)
It was all over before I was ready to leave. I really needed that nap!
The scans came out great, by the way.
This was from the 3Tesla machine, meaning the resolution of the images is far higher than a normal MRI.
We found some tiny new spots but my neuro really thinks that’s just the machine revealing what was already there. I’m going to stick with that because, aside from the weird twitchy eye thingy—she has no concern about that, either!—I don’t have any new symptoms and I’m mostly functional these days.
The good news is basically NNDA… No New Disease Activity… and I’m pretty happy about that, considering that it’s been five years since I dropped my disease-modifying therapy (Tecfidera) due to unpleasant side effects.
I celebrated with an apple fritter on the ferry ride home, which just made me sleepy again! I spent the rest of the day in a nap, woke up just to eat dinner, went back to bed and slept hard all night, still smelling of lavender from the day.
You have to take your wins wherever you get them!