As if the Christmas decorations before Halloween weren’t enough, now we get Thanksgiving dinner cut short by by retailers stirring up riots of buying frenzy along about 6:00 p.m. on the newly dubbed “Gray Thursday.” Jeez. There really is not shame out there.
Like…REALLY? Your buyers, dear Mr. Avaricious One-Percenter Retailer, really and truly can’t wait till the morning after TG to stock up on more STUFF? One article describes people selling their places in line to the highest bidder — and sitting on $90 bids because they know they can get more. What on earth can be worth debasing yourself like that? A 40-inch TV? Sure, $119 is the next best thing to giving it away for free. But you couldn’t get me to behave like that if you did give the thing to me for free.
But then, what the hey…I have no use for a TV set anyway. 😉
My friend Carol and I spent Black Friday at the Mayo Hospital, where I was invited to have my boobs subjected to an MRI preparatory to lopping them off. The last time they tried to get me in an MRI tube — the time I dislocated my shoulder tripping over Cassie — I panicked and ran away. So to lure me back, they had me drug myself with Valium.
Since I don’t take any kind of drug at all (other than a little Maker’s Mark 🙂 ), the stuff had quite a kick. Of course, driving up there was out of the question, so Carol chauffeured me. I’d been told the MRI would take about a half hour.
Well. Yeah. Depends on how you look at it.
About a half-dozen 3- to 4-minute scans (18 to 24 minutes) plus one 15 minute scan do indeed add up to about half an hour. BUT…that doesn’t count all the dicking around beforehand and between times. We left my house at about 9:15 a.m. and got back right at 12:30. THREE HOURS AND FIFTEEN MINUTES.
The morning was shot for both of us. And since I’m bat-brained from the Valium, for me the whole damn day is shot. I’m going to bed whenever I finish cranking out this post.
The MRI itself was not bad. Because they have you lie face-down for a boob MRI, you can’t SEE the inside of the horrid tube, and so it’s nowhere near as claustrophobic and terrifying is it is when they roll you in there face-up. And the noise was just not that traumatic. More strange than anything. As it developed, there was no need to be drugged with Valium — in fact, it made things worse by drying out my mouth so badly it felt like the back of my throat was turning to petrified wood. Would’ve been a lot more comfortable without it.
Speaking of comfort, despite the loveliness of the afternoon and the prettiness of the front courtyard, wherein Cassie and I are writing this, I am retiring to the comfort of the sack.
Good luck in your shopping, if you’re up to that!
Image: Shoppers surging into Target. Public Domain.
I had an MRI once and it wasn’t even in the small tube. (I’ve decided I will just die of the brain tumor before I get in one of those.) It was with the large circle thing around your head. But I still was quietly and silently hysterical. But I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of other grown ups, so I held it together until I got back in my car and THEN I burst into tears.
Tranquilizers sound wonderful.
Any way you look at it, an MRI is terrifying, because they wouldn’t be doing it if they weren’t prospecting for something serious. Brain tumor. Ducky.
I was unnerved because WonderSurgeon told me she was ordering only an MRI of the contralateral breast, so she could see if there was any DCIS in there. She said she didn’t expect to, trying to reassure me that only 3% of women who had a DCIS in Boob A also had one in Boob B at the same time. When they announced that nooo the order was for both breasts, I figured they were looking for signs of invasive cancer in both boobs.
If they find that, of course, then they’ll be yanking out lymph nodes, and THAT is not a good thing. When I said I wanted a bilateral mastectomy, it was on the understanding that we were talking about simple mastectomies, not things that would likely leave me with a lengthy recovery time, long-term aftereffects, and the possibility of permanent lymphedema.