MRI Time

Well, the time came to take Dylan in to get an MRI on his heart. It was just a precautionary thing, to get a good baseline of what things look like now so that we can see how they change going forward. Dylan and I went up to Seattle Children's up in Bellevue, and I found myself revisiting feelings that I hadn't had for quite a few years. Back when Dylan was little and he was getting poked and prodded all the time, the mama bear in me came out in full force. We had some bad experiences with blood draws, and so I felt very protective of my little guy. So here we sat, getting ready for another big poke, to put contrast in his blood so that they could see the images more clearly.

I had heard about MRIs before, but I've never experienced one myself. I knew that there was a long tube, and that it was very noisy, and sometimes people get claustrophobic. I didn't know how Dylan was going to react to all of that. When I scheduled the appointment, they asked me if Dylan would need to be sedated. I didn't know......but I was hoping that he could handle it without sedation. Thankfully, the traumatic experiences that he's had in hospitals are not really in his memory, so other than feeling a little nervous, he didn't have much trepidation, which was a blessing. But I felt all of my trepidation come flooding back to me. I was surprised by that. Can we say PTSD? It's a real thing! 

Since I had to put my phone in the locker before we entered the MRI area, I have no pictures of that whole experience. But Dylan was amazing. His MRI was much more involved than any that I'd heard of before. Because his was scanning his heart, and the heart is surrounded by lungs that are constantly moving as you breathe, his MRI experience consisted of having a technician talk to him through his headphones and give him directions. He had to follow directions of breathing in and holding his breath for 8-10 seconds before he could breathe again. Then sometimes he had to do the opposite and push all of his air out and hold his breath that way.  If he breathed too soon or something else didn't quite go right, they'd have to try again. The MRI lasted over 45 minutes, and at least half of the time Dylan was following breathing directions. So this definitely wasn't a lay back and watch a movie while you try to zone out and relax situation at all. Dylan was a total rockstar!! I was so proud of him. He totally earned that lunch from Chick-fil-a on the way home.