Another Day, Another MRI

I got home and posted to Instagram. A shot of me in a hospital gown, then a cute one in my regular clothes and a little joke about how I'm pretty sure my gown had been on backwards. And that was a pretty good summary of my day. But what you didn't see, which is so often the case on social media, is the tears behind it.

That morning I woke up and took my temperature. Was I ovulating? Was my body even capable of ovulating? It's a routine I'd been in for a couple of months as I tried to determine the answers to these simple questions. And while I didn't think too much about it, this day was about to prove that these little questions were affecting me more than I realised.

After a lovely morning Mum and Pete dropped me at the hospital on their way past. I wasn't worried. MRIs were my wheel house. I walked through the main entrance to a stark reminder that we were in the midst of a pandemic. Two nurses in fresh green scrubs sat at a table. One complimented me on my hair and then asked if I was there to visit someone. They made it very clear that I no longer looked sick. My hair was now long enough to be considered acceptable, although a little frizzy, and I no longer carried the external indicators of somebody having cancer treatment.

Everything was as expected. I got into a gown, had a cannula put into the crease of my left elbow and was led to a waiting room where another woman sat in her matching gown. It was here that my later Instagram post was born. When I realised I had, in all likeliness, put my gown on backwards. Soon my gown twin headed in for her scan and I was left watching shitty daytime television until a nurse came and injected the familiar drug Buscopan into my vein. I felt the cold rush up my arm and into my neck before I settled back in to watch the shitty television, only with drug-induced blurry eyes. Again, nothing out of the ordinary.

Soon I climbed onto the sliding table of the MRI machine. One quick, passing question would turn the routine scan on its head. "So you have no metal in your body and there's no chance you're pregnant?" "No." I responded. I lay on the table and my mind raced. "What do you mean by no chance?" The words came out of my mouth before I could calculate the repercussions and I was asked to get out of the MRI machine.

Before long I stood barefoot on the lino floor, my backwards gown suddenly feeling like it swamped me. My words came out in a cluster rather than a string of sense as I tried to explain in a matter of moments how my cancer treatment had left me unsure what my body was capable of. I watched my fragmented sentences hit the nurse's ears as she walked me to a chair.

They drew some blood to send away and test for pregnancy and, as I looked away, I fought back tears that unexpectedly filled my eyes. I was annoyed that I'd inconvenienced these health-care workers. I was scared that they'd find I was pregnant and that I wouldn't be able to have the MRI that gives me peace of mind every four months. Mostly I was terrified that a negative pregnancy result would throw me into a spiral of believing that a baby wasn't possible.

I was led back into the waiting room where I dabbed tears from my eyes. I had messages from Chris and Brett. My eyes were so blurry I could hardly read them but when I finally squinted hard enough to get my phone in focus I couldn't help but smile.

A nurse poked her head out and I looked at the clock to see that it'd been two hours since I arrived at the hospital. "It's fine. We can do the MRI. The results are negative." Then she was gone.

I was relieved, sad and scared all at once. Regardless, I had my MRI and it was as mundane as these kinds of things can be. I mean, of course I still panic every time I see the attendant's face as I'm pulled out of the machine because I'm sure they've spotted something on the imaging screen and they're trying not to let it show in their expression. But, I do it, I take a picture in the change room, apologise to everyone for being an inconvenience and then it's done.

I post my photo to Instagram, enjoy the messages that roll in about my cute outfit and get up the next day and take my temperature. Because one negative pregnancy test is just that.