I had a bad feeling about the MRI.

Something about that horrid experience didn’t sit right with me, and the worry was made worse by the doctor not calling on Tuesday as promised. And then his nurse not calling Wednesday as I had expected.

It wasn’t the usual bad feeling that I have about medical tests. It wasn’t the bad feeling of thinking that everything was normal and we’d get no answers. It was the feeling that something we hadn’t expected was wrong. That something was seriously and frighteningly wrong.

I finally got a call today from the neurosurgeon’s office.

It turns out my bad feeling was wrong. The MRI was completely normal.

After the call, a very familiar bad feeling washed over me. The bad feeling of being at square one. The bad feeling of having gone through another test with absolutely no useful outcome.

I didn’t shed any tears today. I didn’t scream out in frustration. The pain was there, both physical and emotional, but the exhaustion was overpowering, sedating even.

It’s hard to hear the same news over and over again. It’s hard to wake up and realize from the first instant of consciousness that it’s going to be a bad day. It’s hard to feel like I’m drowning in a river of pain and no matter how loudly I shout out, no one can hear me. No one can help me.

We haven’t exhausted all of our options yet, but it’s hard to keep my chin up this time. This next test is likely the last one. There just aren’t any more left to do that we haven’t already done. If this next lumbar puncture still shows low pressure, I have no idea what we’ll do because there’s simply no explanation for it. It’s hard to have an objective medical problem with absolutely no source. It’s even harder to treat it.

I had a bad feeling about the MRI, but I’m finding that I have a worse one about the future. Hopefully I’m wrong again.

But I have a bad feeling about that too.

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