I woke up with a bad headache. Mom said it was nothing. She gave me some medicine and sent me to school like usual. But the headache won’t go away. It got worse. Mamaw told mom she thought something was wrong, but mom figured I’d be okay after some rest. She was wrong.
An MRI is a medical procedure in which a patient is placed into a narrow tube and a very powerful magnet is used to study certain parts of the body. Once the magnet is turned on, “randomly spinning hydrogen atoms line up in the direction of the magnetic field” and then a radio pulse is directed toward the specific part of the body being studied until those atoms pick up the pulse’s energy, creating a highly powerful black and white image for doctors to study (Understanding MRI results). These MRI images are hard to get, as the patient must sit very still during the procedure. Any movement could compromise the image at any time.
My head feels like it is going to explode. I can’t stop crying. Mom doesn’t know what is wrong. I tried banging my head on the wall to get it to stop. It didn’t help. Mom got scared then. She is taking me to the hospital now. Why won’t it stop?
Needing to get an MRI is a scary thing. It means that there is something wrong with your body, and doctors are unsure what it is. You could get an MRI for your back, your neck, your head, etc. Having to sit very still in that impossibly small tube while the powerful magnet spins endlessly around your head is exhausting. It’s loud and uncomfortable, and all the while, you’re scared what they’re going to find. This MRI could find anything, or nothing at all. Someone with neck pain is “ concerned about when an MRI shows mild disc bulges in the neck, until they are told that many patients without neck pain have similar disc bulges”(Understanding MRI results). Or, in some cases, someone with a never-ending headache may be thinking that doctors are going to find nothing, until a tumor shows up in the brain. That is the case in so many situations.
My head hurts worse. It won’t stop. The doctors are doing all kinds of tests on me. I heard mom say something about my brain. A tumor. She’s scared. Why does my head hurt so much? Please make it stop!
Reading MRI results can be very difficult. Being that the images are always black and white, it can be hard to understand what is normal and what is abnormal. The black, white, and gray on the images can be hard to differentiate between. This is why doctors typically interpret the results and then tell their patients what is going on rather than trying to show them.
Mom says I have to go to sleep for a while. She says that the doctors have to do surgery to make the pain go away. I’m scared. She said everything is going to be okay. The doctor is going to make the pain stop. Oh, someone make it stop.
Looking at an MRI scan is unlike looking at anything else. It can be confusing, especially since we see the images as “shades of grey--some body tissues show up darker or lighter, all depending on the above processes” and are enough to drive anyone crazy while trying to understand what all of that means (About Health). To start, though, the black background looks dark and gloomy, almost scary and mysterious, but this outer rim is actually a safe zone. It’s there to amplify the images it’s showing. It means that the magnets didn’t pick up any sort of activity, and as a result depicted that area in the form of the darkest, truest black. The color black can mean many different things in different cases, but say in the case of a pediatric brain tumor, that color could mean something else entirely. In those cases, doctors want to see darker colors. In such a rare instance, the color black means safety. It means normality. White, on the other hand, takes the villain role, much to the confusion of everyone. White is supposed to be good, and black is supposed to be bad. But not in this case. Not for him.
My head doesn’t hurt anymore. It stopped. I’m very tired. Mom is crying. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. All I know is that it stopped. The doctor seems surprised. Everyone does. I want to ask what happened, but I’m so tired. It doesn’t hurt anymore…
When doctors look at MRI brain scans for pediatric tumors, white is the devil. White means that there are tissues present “that are high in proton content- such as fat” and sometimes are a sign of some sort of tumor (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). White, in its lumpy form, means danger. Sometimes those villainous tumors, in their traitorous shining armor, can be removed without much harm. But sometimes, they can’t be. Sometimes, they’re in dangerous spots, or sometimes their cancerous and have already amassed an army of other tumors to fight with them. In those cases, the battle becomes much more difficult. Adam was the little boy who went to bed one night a normal four year old and woke up the next morning morning with a headache that wouldn’t stop. It got worse and worse until his parents had to rush him to hospital. What doctors found was unimaginable.
Finding a brain tumor in a surgically unexplored part of a child’s brain is not something any parent wishes to hear. But that’s what happened to Adam. For him, the white devil showed up ready for battle near his brain stem, and doctors were unsure if they could remove it. Having been there for what doctors could assume was most, if not all of his life, this brain tumor was benign, but still dangerous as it was continuously growing. Those headaches he was having were a result of the tumor pushing against the rest of his brain. If it wasn’t removed immediately, he was going to die.
In a race against time, doctors came up with a plan. No brain surgeon had ever gone that deep in the brain before, especially in a child. But if they did nothing, Adam would lose the battle and the white devil would win. So with the consent of his poor, worried parents, doctors raced him to surgery, not knowing if he would ever wake up, let alone live a normal life.
He was in surgery for hours and doctors were able to miraculously remove the tumor. Adam had made it over the big hurdle. However, there were more battles to be fought. After complications with surgery, he went under five more times, and he finally came out tumor-free. Nine weeks later, following more medical procedures, Adam went home. It was not all a happy welcome home, however. Because of the surgery, Adam had no longer had feeling in the right side of his body. He had to re-learn how to walk, as well as had to accept that his right arm now had a permanent tremor, rendering it useless. On top of that, his eyes were slightly off-center and he had gruesome scars all over his head, amongst many other permanent side effects that would take days to list. He had to find a way to be normal again, as a four-year-old boy who had been through hell and survived.
None of that stopped him, though. Against all expectations, he not only learned how to walk again, but he eventually ran track in high school. He learned how to drive a car and taught himself do most everything anyone else can do. He went to college and started a career. And most importantly, he found his someone to share his life with and asked her to marry him. Against everything, that little boy came out on top. He’s a fighter, a survivor, a man who as a boy fought and defeated a tumor that had all odds stacked in its favor. White is supposed to be good, pure, and safe. But in Adam’s case, it was deadly. In this case, black became the good that its counterpart is supposed to stand for. Black, for once, became the symbol of safety and purity, challenging all expectations. Today, Adam’s brain scans show nice, normal darkness where that tumor used to be. And that darkness couldn’t possibly be any brighter, any safer, or any more miraculous. As his soon-to-be wife, I couldn’t be more thankful or more proud.
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