"Lord of the Thighs"

During the phone call from Dr. Stone last week, she explained to me a few tests she needed me to schedule here in Tri-Cities and have done before my appt in Seattle with her Friday.  One of which was an MRI.  An MRI of my thighs.  She wants one normal MRI of them and one with IV contrast (of course...because needles are my FAVORITE!).  I'm not exactly sure what it is that we're looking for in this, but I remember her saying it had something to do with inflammation and weakness.

Part of my issues have been muscle weakness and early fatigue.  It's not extreme, but my muscles are significantly weaker than they typically are and will randomly just turn to jello.  Along with that I'll get extreme body aches.  I'll literally wake up feeling like I had run a marathon the day before...which, if you consider walking from one end of my house to the other "a marathon", is very true.  Every muscle in my body will ache and hurt.  It's a cross between flu-like hurt and sore from exercising immense amounts hurt.  And it's random.  For me, it will usually come out of nowhere and last a few days to a few weeks.  It's debilitating and will literally make my morning routine go from twenty minutes, to about two hours.

Other times I'll be doing something repetitive (most often I find that it happens to me when I'm climbing stairs) and that muscle that I'm using will just turn to jello...and after very little work!  For example, I was climbing the bleachers at the Seahawks game last wknd (GO HAWKS!) and after about ten bleachers my right thigh lost it.  I had to stop and shake it out and mentally force it to go further.  And that was on top of my gasping because my stupid lungs work at 60% right now.  I'm 27, in relatively decent shape, and can't climb stairs.  How embarrassing.  

Anyway, I had the MRI done last night (I accidentally scheduled it over the Seahawks game which was like the worst mistake of my life!).  It took about two hours to get them both done.  The tech who put in my IV was good, thank goodness, and got my vein on the first try.  I've literally had my veins poked over a hundred times in the past six months so I've gotten really good at giving good directions as to which vein and which part works best.  Sadly, my best vein and the best part of it is now covered in significant scar tissue so sometimes it takes a bit of work these days.  Anyway, IV went fine, MRI went fine (especially since my techs were able to find the game and put it on the headphones for me!), and I was even able to catch the last quarter of the game on a tv down the street with my friend Block when I was done!!

They said that they'd get a rush read on the MRI so that Dr. Stone can have the results by my appt Friday.

So, I know that pictures are entertaining so I'm trying to include pictures in my blog, but I feared that the techs would look at me funny if I made them wait to put me in the machine so I could take pictures of it and the room...so instead you get a waiting room picture!  I had this done at Kadlec and, after the amounts of time I've spent in waiting rooms of doctors offices and hospitals throughout the Northwest here I've come to the conclusion that the Lourde's hospital waiting room is my favorite.  Here is the Kadlec waiting room:

It's not bad.  It has nice, newer, comfy chairs.  There is a piano behind me.  It really wasn't a bad waiting area...but I LOVED Lourdes.  I didn't get a good picture of Lourdes, I took more of an abstract picture:

That is me in the Lourdes waiting room enjoying an amazing Iced White Mocha, sitting in the comfy chair, with the cool carpet, and the absolute BEST part...the gigantic water wall fountain to my left!!!  It took up the entire wall and was SO peaceful!  It was by far my favorite waiting room.  Just in case you were wondering about the waiting rooms at various hospitals...you're welcome!