My First MRI - Written in 2006

The end of 2000, I was a major work-a-holic.  My husband and I were having problems! He kept telling me he loved me but I didn’t feel like I was seeing any evidence of that. I called myself a computer widow. I was the main one raising his son. I was working in Transcription in Radiology at a large multi-county Medical Center at that time. One of our doctors (we had 7 Radiologists) came in and asked me to help him with something. As I was explaining, he took a tissue out of the box on my desk and wiped up a water spot I had made from my cup of ice water. I cried!

That doctor and I never did anything more than just talk, but my husband found a note that I had written to the doctor on Christmas eve, which was slightly suggestive of the idea that I wanted more. Of course, My husband and I went ‘round and I told him that if our marriage was going to survive, we needed to get into counseling. We had his whole family coming for the yearly Christmas Eve party, so we had to put it behind us.

I was already on my second round of anti-biotics for a supposed ear infection at that time. I kept getting more and more ill. My family doc started running all kinds of tests.  He wasn't sure what was going on. I was running into walls and it appeared that I just had an inner ear infection but that nothing would get rid of it. Finally, I talked to one of the Radiologists about my problems and he thought it was best to just do an MRI of my head and internal auditory canals (since I’d had Tinnitus -for a year or so, but only on one side). 

I was scheduled to have an MRI done on January 24th. The evening before the MRI, I sat on my screened back porch. I was talking to God about all that was going on at our house. I ended up telling Him that if there had to be something badly wrong with my brain for us to become closer to Him and closer to each other, then so be it. I just couldn’t stand all the problems, fighting, and worst of all the neglect, any more. I also believe that God showed me to call my mom and tell her that if they found something badly wrong with my brain that she shouldn’t worry because He was taking care of it.

The following day I had the MRI. I knew how to call up the reports on the telephone since I worked in Radiology, so I did that evening and the first thing I heard was that I had a ring-enhancing lesion of about 2 cm in my left frontal lobe that looked like brain metastasis (cancer that had spread from some other primary source) among other lesions.  My husband was standing next to me and I fell to my knees screaming and crying hysterically (of course, I’m still human). I called Radiology, since the doctor that read my MRI was still there and he spoke with me. He said that he always tried to paint the worst picture so that doctors wouldn’t dawdle. And, he said if my doc called him the next day that he would tell him what should be done next. 

Our family hit a brick wall.  The next thing I did was call the 700 Club for prayer and put them on the speaker phone for the 3 of us to hear. I had thought maybe an acoustic neuroma  (benign brain tumor), but cancer was a whole lot different.

And, I went through 2 ½ more years of weekly testing and doctors. Think that may be an exaggeration? My attorney for Social Security had me write down everything including docs for the last 6 months of that 2 1/2 years. The total number of doctors was 14.

In July of 2003, I had an appointment with a doctor for a diagnosis confirmation that was the number one specialist in the world for CNS Vasculitis (CNS Vasculitis is an extremely rare auto immune disease that was only found by autopsy until 1999. There is yet no known cause and it is considered to be terminal). 

I was told by this doctor that he thought that I was in remission since he could see no active disease. He told me that I needed to move from looking at the disease to concentrating on getting better. And, I’ve been fighting, with God’s help, to move into a new life with Him ever since.

I can honestly say that we’ve had some majorly rough times. We’ve given up nearly all that we had and moved 1100 miles away to start a new life.  I was still using a cane to get around until the first day of that move when I through the cane on the dashboard of our moving truck, never to use it again!

In 2005, while our son and I were in Ohio selling our house, my husband had moved to my brother’s down in Bradenton, Florida to start working and he found our new church. I had never told him about that night on the back porch in 2001…and I cried.  

We went on to also join that same church the summer of 2006 and I could see how God had been working in our lives all that time through that whole storm.