Yesterday was brain scan day for Miss Frugal.
Apart from letting her know what to expect, we’d tried not to talk about the scan too much beforehand as we didn’t want to make it into a big thing which we thought would have made her more nervous than she was. Our plan worked to a certain extent as she didn’t seem overly concerned about it – until we picked her up from school early yesterday to go to the hospital that is.
She was very quiet on the journey there and had a scared look on her face (you know the one, wide eyes, sad mouth) that no amount of cuddling and holding hands would get rid of. I was relieved that we were taken through really quickly and that the nurses were lovely and clearly used to dealing with nervous children. Once we’d answered about a million questions and Miss Frugal was all prepared, she laid on the bed of the machine and the nurse gave her some headphones and placed a helmet type thing over her head before the bed was rolled into the machine. The nurse gave me a pair of headphones and an emergency buzzer and left the room to start the scan.
At this point, I’m not sure who was more nervous and I had my hand slightly in the machine holding her little hand, both gripping as tight as we could. We heard a voice telling us that the scan was about to start and then the noise started, a loud banging noise at first followed by other equally loud droning noises, not that Miss Frugal cared – she was listening to Justin Bieber through her headphones 😉 She gradually realaxed and after about five minutes, she let go of my hand and smiled at me peering into the machine. This went on for what seemed like about a week but in reality was only for about fifteen minutes and I could see that she needed to cough but was trying desparetely not to, she started to shake a bit and I thought she was going to cry until we heard a voice telling her how well she was doing and reassuring her that we were half way through the scan. This calmed her down and we made it through the rest of the scan without any other problems thank goodness.
We don’t find out the results for ages yet as our appointment with the consultant isn’t until 22 July although the nurse yesterday said they’d contact us sooner if they needed to.
I had a little cry last night after she’d gone to bed as it was awful seeing her in that huge machine, looking so scared and while I was stood next to her during the scan, with nothing to do other than watch her to make sure she was OK, I had lots of time to think. I hate that, when you can’t help but think about things you really don’t want to think about – I thought about how the Dr has ruled out most things that could be causing her dizzy spells and headaches and how she had originally told us that they would only do a brain scan as a last resort and all the things that an MRI brain scan can find along with any other negative thoughts you can think of (forty minutes is a LONG time you know).
I’m feeling a lot more positive today though and I have my sensible head back on, the one that tells me that it’s just a precaution and that everything will be fine and we’re going to have a lovely family weekend now to forget about all of our worries. I hope you all enjoy your weekend too….
