Sally71
Well-Known Member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Parent
My daughter had an MRI scan yesterday (yes a Sunday!) which was interesting! We knew she’d have to remove her pump and sensor, I thought I’d be told to wait in the waiting room but I was actually allowed in the scan room with her. They give you a locker to put your stuff in, as the MRI scanner is basically a massive magnet you can’t be carrying any coins, keys, bank or credit cards, wrist watches, phones, any electronic devices whatsoever and I even had to remove my belt! As I was not going in the scanner itself I didn’t have to remove my glasses or jewellery (which is gold), daughter has her ears pierced but hardly ever wears anything in them any more, and neither of us has anything metal implanted in our bodies. Just as my daughter was about to get on the scanner they said “oh we’ll have to change her face mask” (because she was wearing one with the metal strip in). They gave her one without the metal strip, she took the old one off and put it on her lap... and it floated into the scanner! A good reminder of why the rules are there!
We left her pump and Dexcom transmitter in the locker, the radiographer understood that sensors can’t be reused and offered to dispose of it for us, with Dexcom though you have a transmitter bit on the top which you take off and reuse with the next sensor, so we kept that bit in the bag with the pump and the radiographer was quite fascinated with the small size of the sensor itself, and that there was no needle sticking out of it! We kept the cannula in as we use the plastic ones, no metal on those once you’ve inserted them. It was very fortuitous timing with the sensor, we got the appointment through just after we’d inserted it and it had less than 24 hours left to run so we didn’t lose much!
All went well, she was in the scanner for about half an hour, they do the scans in short bursts though, so you get a recorded announcement saying “the next scan will last for 3 minutes” or whatever and about half way through the radiographer was talking to her through the scanner to check that she was OK. It doesn’t half make a lot of noise though! They gave her ear plugs and me ear defenders but it still sounds pretty loud!
Walking into the scanner room I thought we could have been on the Starship Enterprise or something, the whole room was white except for some blue markings on the floor, and the scanner itself looks like a gigantic polo mint with a table sticking out of the hole, almost as if my daughter was about to be teleported somewhere. Amazing technology, all very interesting. I wasn’t allowed to see the images it produced of course, hope we won’t have to wait long for the results. When we got home my husband helpfully asked if they had found a brain in there!
We left her pump and Dexcom transmitter in the locker, the radiographer understood that sensors can’t be reused and offered to dispose of it for us, with Dexcom though you have a transmitter bit on the top which you take off and reuse with the next sensor, so we kept that bit in the bag with the pump and the radiographer was quite fascinated with the small size of the sensor itself, and that there was no needle sticking out of it! We kept the cannula in as we use the plastic ones, no metal on those once you’ve inserted them. It was very fortuitous timing with the sensor, we got the appointment through just after we’d inserted it and it had less than 24 hours left to run so we didn’t lose much!
All went well, she was in the scanner for about half an hour, they do the scans in short bursts though, so you get a recorded announcement saying “the next scan will last for 3 minutes” or whatever and about half way through the radiographer was talking to her through the scanner to check that she was OK. It doesn’t half make a lot of noise though! They gave her ear plugs and me ear defenders but it still sounds pretty loud!
Walking into the scanner room I thought we could have been on the Starship Enterprise or something, the whole room was white except for some blue markings on the floor, and the scanner itself looks like a gigantic polo mint with a table sticking out of the hole, almost as if my daughter was about to be teleported somewhere. Amazing technology, all very interesting. I wasn’t allowed to see the images it produced of course, hope we won’t have to wait long for the results. When we got home my husband helpfully asked if they had found a brain in there!
