The Good, Bad, and the Ugly of an MRI

I can guarantee you that Andrew won't have any good memories of having an MRI. And I won't have any of watching him have one either. Yesterday I took Andrew to the hospital for an MRI. I have had MANY MRI's, too many to count and it usually takes an hour tops. We were there ALL day. For those of you who have never had one of these tests it stands for magnetic blah blah blah and has these loud banging noises that are really annoying and could scare a baby or young child to death. Besides that, they are not cheap- about 15 years ago when I had to have frequent MRI's they cost about $1,000 without insurance. On top of that you have to be completely still. Because it's impossible to get a 5 month old to not move a muscle Andrew had to be given an IV for sedatives and a catheter. He had to have a catheter because one of the medicines they gave him made him pee A LOT, like 8 oz. within an hour.

Andrew is a really hard stick- it took 3 attempts to get the IV in him and over 30 minutes of non-stop screaming. Meanwhile I'm crying in the hallway just outside the room trying to control myself. If only I could've done it instead of Andrew. And to make things worse- he REFUSED to go to sleep. It's not that he wasn't tired; he'd only had an hour of sleep since waking up at 7 am and here it was 1 pm. They gave him more medicine and still more until he was given almost equal to that of an adult. The nurse didn't believe me when I told her he was the more mellow baby of our twins. She described him as a *sedative nightmare*. For all the torture they did to Andrew I'm glad they had a rough time. Way to go Andrew! Finally, about 5 minutes before the MRI was over Andrew crashed hard and had to be sent to Surgery Recovery until he came out of it, which took an hour. What was supposed to be a quick test turned into an all day affair. I am so lucky to have great friends who watched Aaron at our house all day. Thank you Heidi and Tammy- you are the best!

Actually there isn't really much good about an MRI except they take better pictures and give more accurate results than an ultrasound. While the ultrasound just gives a picture of the kidney's outside, an MRI shows outside & inside and how the kidney drains. The good news about Andrew's not-so-fun MRI is the great results we got. Today the urologist's nurse called to let us know that both kidneys are completely open and draining well. He won't need to have a follow up for 3 months! And to think that only 10 months ago we were told Andrew wouldn't live. He is our miracle baby.