When I explained to the MRI tech about my scheduled spine MRI on Sunday, she agreed to rearrange things and got both tests done this morning. Yay!

A breast MRI, which I’ve had before, is done laying on my stomach. The spine MRI required me to lay on my back, so I got a bit claustrophobic right away. I had to talk myself down and keep my eyes closed the entire time. I’m glad there was a fan blowing and I was wearing headphones. She said the first spine test would last about 20 mins, so I just kept counting the songs as they played. I figured most songs last about 4 mins, so I could listen to 5 or 6 songs with my eyes closed and pretend I was laying on the beach. Wind blowing. Warm sun (the MRI machine gets warm!).

Then we switched to the first breast test, which was another 20 mins or so. Then the next breast test which required an injection of contrast dye. Another 10 or so mins. Finally, we ended with a spine contrast, which was about 10 mins more. And just as we were about done, the tech paused and said she wanted to do one more test. That’s when I got nervous.

It took all day to get my results. The breast results came first and were fine. I got very nervous when the spine results didn’t follow right away. And when I got them, I felt like crying. No cancer. What a relief! The spot is a benign hemangioma, which is essentially a collection of abnormal blood vessels. It usually doesn’t cause any symptoms.

The scan also showed some normal spinal degeneration which makes me feel old. I’ll take that though. I finally feel like this cancer part of my life is officially over. Patrick and I celebrated by hanging out in our backyard with a drink and following it up with cake. I’m so thankful for this good news!