Get That MRI! Demand It!

As you know, this summer, my mom died. Had she had an MRI over a year ago, she might still be with us. However, that was one test that she didn't have, and no one suggested it.

For over a year my mom complained of being tired, beyond tired, exhausted! She went to the doctor several times, had numerous blood tests, a sleep study, and was put on a C-PAP machine. But her tiredness just got worse, culminating in July with weird speech, body temperature irregularities, timing that was strange, and texts that made no sense made up of words that weren't words. Because she kept getting tested and seeing doctor's, I just went with it. My sister, however, kept wondering if it was a reoccurrence of her cancer, but no doctors contemplated that theory.

Why would it be Lymphoma again? If you've gone over five years without a reoccurrence, you're supposed to be fine. My mom had Large Cell B Lymphoma over ten years ago. She had chemo and radiation, and the results were so good, able to be physically seen, and occurring so fast, that she didn't have to have all of the chemo.

For years, I'd tease her that she had Adult ADHD because she flitted from activity to activity. She asked her doctor; the doctor basically said I was crazy. But see, she never did this in the past. Her personality began to change too. So much so, that I even told her that I really hoped I didn't change like her when I got old. She had always liked kids but as the years went on, they drove her batty, and noises most of us ignore drove her nuts, even making her buy a new refrigerator to replace one that wasn't that old. And her tiredness made her walk like a drunken sailor, listing to the side. (Now in pictures, I can see the tilt of her head over time!) Her vision also changed, and her glasses just never seemed right, along with being diagnosed with night blindness. All of this, and no one thought to check for cancer in the brain.

It was not until I took her in to the ER due to the very strange way she was acting, her listlessness, wearing flannel pajamas in the summer,  time all messed up, and not making sense, that a CAT scan was performed where irregularities were detected, and she was admitted to the hospital where THEN an MRI was done which showed tumors.

By then, it was too late, and we lost her just over a month after diagnosis of Lymphoma in the brain. We now have questions like, was it there since the first time it was diagnosed?

So why do I say get the MRI, demand it? Because I want you or your loved one to live! Not long after my mom died, I was reading the 2023 Lowell Pink Arrow booklet on survivors of cancer. One of them had brain cancer, and guess what? She had many of the same symptoms as my mom: ADHD like behaviors, sensitivity to noise, sleep issues, etc. And she too had many tests before finding the culprit.

I'm not a doctor, but having gone through this with my mom, seeing in print another with a similarity, I say, Get the MRI; Demand it!