Life would be so much easier....

If I just had some super powers.

Where MRI

The rescheduled Open MRI was today.

The good news - they gave me drugs this time.

The bad news - unlike the closed MRI, which takes about 8 minutes to complete - the Open MRI takes up to 30 minutes to complete due to the different set up.

The technician, trying to be cutesy, first said something like, "and in 5 hours, we are done!" and even in the slight haze created by that second Ativan, I got upset. Then he said he was joking and it was really on 30 minutes. I told him to stop joking, that I knew it was 8 minutes, and that is when he told me that the 30 minutes was not a joke. I felt like I traded off 8 minutes of sober terror for 30 minutes of slightly drugged terror.

I ended up popping the third Ativan and asking for a few more minutes to compose myself. After that, he got me set up and slid me into the machine for about a minute, then brought me out and asked if I thought I could do it. Me, being the 12 year old that I am, asked for a glass of water. (and a story, and my teddy bear, and my blanklee). After the water, I was a little more dopey, so he put me in for real and told me that while I wasn't supposed to move at all, I could move my hand and that if I needed him to stop at any time to wave my right hand and he could see it from his station and would come in and get me out.

I found it was OK if I kept my eyes shut and let myself get hypnotised by the thumping noise the machine made. I was still having issues, but the drugs dulled them enough to help. The only times it was real bad was when the noise would stop and I would think, "Is it over? Why is he not coming to get me out of this contraption?" But then the noise would start back up, and I'd lose myself again. At one point near the end, I felt a little upset, and I tried to wave him down, but my hand and arm had gone numb from another attack, so I couldn't move that whole side of my body. Fortunately, it was over within a minute or two of that anyway.

I'm sort of glad that I had one of those attacks while having the MRI - maybe that will show them what they need to see in order to diagnose me. And hopefully, whatever it is, it won't be that bad. Either way, will keep you guys posted.

Once it was all over, Dad bought me a Chick-fil-a and took me home, where my Mom, God Bless Her Heart, had spent the time we were gone cleaning my house. And the even greater thing - she had done all the jobs that I really hate - like sweeping out the hot garage, vacuuming the stairs, cleaning out the microwave, and scrubbing the bathroom counters and sinks.

At least I don't need a brain scan to know that I have great parents.

Updates

When last we spoke, I was still recovering from the trauma of trying to deal with the bad MRI.

Today, I talked to my doctor's office and they said that they could either schedule me at a place with an Open MRI or prescribe a sedative for me to go back to the original one. I asked if we could do both. Fortunately, they agreed.

Turns out that the only place on this side of the city with an Open MRI is less than a mile from my house. So, we are all set for next Monday.

more cat pictures

Also, I finally got the kitchen cabinets organized. It really goes fast once you realize that half the stuff is way past expired and can be tossed in the trash.

Panic! at the MRI

I was scheduled for a brain MRI today. It did not go well.

I don't know why, but over the last year or two, I've developed a bad case of claustrophobia. As a kid, I could wiggle my way into the crawl space under the house, shimmy under the bed, or hide in the cabinet under the sink during a game of hide and seek. But lately, I can't seem to even think about being in an enclosed space without starting to choke or get dizzy.

As I sat in the waiting area, I started to get a little anxious. So, I just started telling myself that this was ridiculous and that I would be fine. And I kept repeating -"You'll be fine" to myself quietly until they came to get me. Then, they made me sit in another waiting area, and I found the lights to be incredibly bright - almost blinding. And so I continued to tell myself that it was all in my mind, that I would be fine, that I was an adult and knew better than to worry, that people did this 1,000s of times a day all over the world and they were all fine. But you know - logic doesn't always work well against anxiety.

Finally, it is my turn, and I started tearing up before I even sat down on the table. The technician asked if I was going to be OK, and I told her that I just had to breathe a few times and I would be OK.

I lied.

The minute my back hit the table and my head went into the holder, I started to choke. It was like my throat was swollen shut. So, I sat back up again. She told me it would only last 8 minutes, and I told myself that 8 minutes was nothing. And so back on the table I went. And the throat thing happened again - only this time accompanied by tunnel vision. I tried to breathe and repeated my "You'll be OK" mantra, but then she snapped the helmet over my face and I completely lost my s***. It was at once the most embarrassing and the most traumatic thing I can recall happening to me in a long time.

Fortunately, the technician was at least sweet about it. She said that I wasn't the first person that this ever happened to. Heck, apparently I wasn't even the first person that had happened to today. But still, I felt like an idiot.

Now I have to call my doctor in the morning to see if he will give the orders to have me sedated for the next attempt. But just thinking about - with drugs or without - makes me start to feel choked, and makes my heart starts pounding. I had hoped that by blogging about it, I would get past it, but so far no.

On the bright side, after I left the MRI lab, I had to go across the street to have my yearly mammogram. After the MRI panic attack, the mammogram was a piece of cake.

Thank God my boobs aren't claustrophobic.

Must Remember

It sort of defeats the purpose of the 100 calorie snack.......

if you consume 6 of them at the same time.

Happy 2008 2.0

Yeah - I'm trying this again.

Hopefully my second attempt at kicking off the new year will go better than what happened last week. I've already got my lunch ready to go for tomorrow, have an extra alarm set for the morning, and have planned a new route to work to avoid the invisible traffic light that only one cop can see.

Wish me luck.

Why my Love Life is a One Car Garage

I’ve long been a dabbler in Feng Shui. And by dabbler, I mean that I own 47 unopened books on the subject and can correctly pronounce the term.

Recently, I discovered an HGTV show centered around the teachings of Feng Shui called Fun Shui. In it, the host Stephanie McWilliams does Feng Shui focused redesigns on people's homes in order to help them improve certain areas of their life. Then, they follow up with them a few months later to see if it helped.

The show inspired me to actually crack open a few of the books and learn a little more than the few things I that I do know - like not having your bed positioned with your feet pointing towards the door because it drains your energy, or that clutter is bad because it blocks your progress. (I seem to have a lot of blocked progress in the floor of my bedroom closet and surrounding my desk.)

In Feng Shui, there is a map, or bagua, that you place over your house plan that shows what is controlled by different zones of your home. You place the map based on where your front door is located.



My house is rectangular with the front door in the exact middle of the front wall (career zone), so it seemed pretty straightforward. Based on this, I came to the conclusion that the Wealth area of my home was in my living room, and most specifically in the corner where my TV is located. I thought this was kind of neat – maybe a sign that I would one day soon earn my wealth in connection with TV, possibly working on that sitcom I always dreamed of writing. This would also put the Love area of my home where my reading and office area is located – so maybe I should consider signing up for an online dating service, since my computer was located in the Love area.

Then I read more.

It seems, anything that falls behind the front door and is covered by the roof is part of the map. So, if you have a piece of your house that juts out, then that expands the entire square or rectangle to include that area and any other area outside of your home that would fall in the square if you completed it based on the outer edges of the jutted out piece. Which means that my garage at the back of the house is part of the house, and therefore, its outer edges cause the back deck, adjoining grassy area, and parking pad to also become part of my home for the purposes of Feng Shui.

Basically, that means that my Wealth area is where I keep my garbage can, and my Love area is a one car garage with a bunch of old, dusty clutter in the corner.

This explains sooooooo much.

Reboot

I am a Virgo.

Virgos tend to be perfectionists. Now, this is not to say that we think that we are perfect, just that we strive for perfection in certain areas of our life. In my case, that is usually means an unimportant area – like having all of my frozen dinners alphabetized and stacked neatly in the freezer. But not is some way that would help me tremendously, like in following through with career goals or continuing my formal education.

Along with the perfectionist stuff, we are also overly critical. Especially regarding ourselves. This can be a pretty painful set up sometimes, because in striving to do something in an impossibly perfect way, we will inevitably fail to meet these outrageous standards we have set, and then proceed to beat ourselves up over it for years to come.

I see this in myself whenever I start a new project, and it doesn't start off as well as I had hoped. Instead of plugging along in spite of the problems, I will end up abandoning the whole thing because it isn't perfect. And even if other people don’t notice the imperfection, I know it is there, lurking beneath the surface, and it taunts me at every turn. So, I give up.

A few years back, my father and I traveled to the home of our Harbin ancestors in the English town of Yeovil. It was probably the best trip of my life.


Yeovil is a little village located in southwestern England. It is just a few miles south of Stonehenge. For as long as I can remember, I wanted to visit Stonehenge. It is a place that I have been drawn to in such a strong way, that I can't even begin to explain.



Dad and I arrived at the site pretty early in the morning. And as we came up from the tunnel under the road, and the monument came into view, it was as if the world stood still around me. I couldn't hear the nearby traffic, the voices of the other tourists, I could only hear my own heartbeat. And at that moment, I immediately recognized something so deep within myself, so ingrained in my DNA, that it stretched back 5,000 years. I understood completely what Stonehenge was, and who was responsible for its existence.



Stonehenge was the work of one of my ancient ancestors. I'm sure that it was a project he started with the best of intentions. He carefully gathered all the materials he would need, scouring the world for just the right rocks even if he had to import them from many miles away (and probably paying extra for expedited shipping and handling.) Once the stones were in his pasture, he began placing the stones in just the right spots and positions. And then suddenly - a stone tipped over. He tried to upright it, but you could probably still see the dent in the earth where it had tipped over. He may have tried to fluff the grass where the dent had been, and maybe rake a few leaves around to make it less obvious. But that just probably made it seem worse to him.



I'm sure his neighbor wandered over, and commented on his nice collection of stone, and how impressive it all looked. He probably said, "Hyrb (Harbin in ancient Celtic) - it looks fine. No one will see the indention. They will just enjoy these massive stones and all the hard work you've put in." But Hyrb could see the dent, and he just couldn't let it go. So, knowing that it was less than perfect, he just gave up - left his carefully selected stones out in the field, hoped no one would notice his failure, and moved on, a few miles to the south, and perhaps to his next great project.

There are a lot of Stonehenges in my past. Some big, some small. Discarded, half-done needlepoint pillowcases where I missed a stitch, and though I tried valiantly to pull out the stitch and sew over it, I could still see the minuscule threads of the bad stitch. An entire closet full of empty photo albums, frames and assorted scrapbooking tools, all collecting dust while waiting for me to start making those perfect picture displays and keepsakes - if only I could decide on a consistent theme or style. And of course, the corpses of my abandoned blogs, little corners of the cyberspace where I had every intention of posting witty comments and thoughts on life at least twice a week, but where there currently lies dozens of half written drafts that I could never complete, because I couldn't come to grips with the imperfection of my writing. Cause, you know, the Virgo thing.

So. Here we are. I've picked up, moved a few miles south, and am ready to try again.

Maybe this one will be perfect.