Waiting on MRI Results

Roscoe just finished his MRI about 1 hour ago and things went fine. The doctors chose not to sedate him (with drugs) because of the risks associated with his pulmonary hypertension. Instead, they hoped that by keeping him awake right up until the MRI, he would sleep through it. That approach worked, but not as planned.

We finished Roscoe's feeding and then hoped to have time to rock him to sleep, but instead the nurse asked us to put him into the mobile cart so he'd fall asleep there and wouldn't wake up when he got transferred. They wrapped him in a cloth and belted him into an inflatable blue plastic sleeve to keep him still. Basically it was like an inflatable hot dog bun with straps across the top and Roscoe was the wiener. He didn't like it.

Roscoe screamed in a tantrum-like scream until they lowered his oxygen pressure, and even then he was still quite ruffled. As they carted him down the hallway, he stayed calm as long as he had his beloved monkey pacifier in his mouth.

We waited in the waiting room while they took him to the MRI room. We didn't pass a sign that said "Caution: electromagnet always on". I told Alisha that I wanted to throw my keys and other metal things down the hallway past the sign to see what would happen, but she advised otherwise.

For the first few minutes, we heard an occasional cry from Roscoe before the MRI process started. Once the MRI noises started, we didn't hear much. The noises kept going, so we assumed that meant he was remaining still. After the MRI was done, they said he did great. As they wheeled him back down the hallway, they remarked that the MRI noises almost put him to sleep. I guess he's so used to loud noises from his hospital room that the MRI made him feel comfortable.

We won't hear the MRI results for a few days, but when we do we'll post them here. We were encouraged by a nurse in the NICU who'd had twins, where one of the twins had a tethered cord. She said that the surgery took about 1 hour and was straightforward (as much as spinal surgery can be) so we are hoping for something that simple for Roscoe. If we'd gone home on April 1st as planned, this would have gone unnoticed until much later when Roscoe may have had trouble going to the bathroom, crawling, or walking as a result. Now we'll just wait and see ...