Did I mention how much I hate needles.......

I HATE NEEDLES>>>>>

I hate all needles...they are sharp and they hurt. There isn't much else to be said about them. Nothing good about needles. Now, I've had shots/IV's from folks who were good at giving them and it didn't hurt AS BAD and from folks were weren't so good and it hurt a lot more. Last night was probably up there in the scale of folks who may just not have it down quite so well. She had to try 4 times to get a vein and get my IV in place. My veins don't exactly cooperate well - they do roll around, but geez.... come one. 4 Times! If I have to do this again... my sister Stacey's coming with me and I'll let her do it. I hear she's much better at this IV thing!!

Upon finally getting a successful IV, she gave me some Verced to calm me which was needed. It wasn't a great deal of Verced, just enough to take the edge off apparently. She said she could only give me 3 (??ml,mg,??) and 1 more with the contrast about 45 min later. Any more than that has to be given at the hospital. It didn't put me out at all, but it did calm me down some. Laying in the machine was kind of strange. It makes all sorts of strange noices and the first time I was in it when they were doing the cervical spine MRI, my right arm (with the IV) was up against a very warm wall. By the end of it, I was about to start moving my arm away from the wall. Luckily, they pulled me out of the machine at just about that moment to change to the brain MRI so I had them wrap the sheet a little more around my arm. I had a towel over my eyes too so I didn't see a thing which was helpful. The second time they put me in there for the first brain MRI set of scans, towards the end I could feel myself start to panic a bit. Not sure why... I couldn't see anything and everything had been going well, but I just started having this panicky feeling start in like a whoosh. Took a couple of deep breaths and luckily, it was towards the end and they pulled me back out. For the next series, they had to inject the contrast and with it, she put in another little does of the sedative so I did ok during the last scan as well.

I felt fine when we left, a little sssslllllloooooowwwwww :-), but was fine. Went home, had something to eat, and went to sleep.

Of course, I know nothing.... won't know anything until next week. Now we play the waiting game....

Today is Rachel's birthday party with her friends! She's invited about 6 or 7 friends over (both girls and boys) to have fun tonight. Pictures (what I can sneak in) and details later ....

MA