Kennedy's MRI

Well, now that we are officially into 2009, we are going to recap the Schofield Family Happenings for the last couple of weeks. We took Kennedy to Primary Children's Medical Center for an MRI on her neck. We stayed the night before in SLC since her appointment was at 7:15 AM. When we arrived to check-in at the hospital, nobody was in the radiology check-in station, and didn't showup until 7:35 am. We were then surprised to find out that we needed to pay for our portion of the MRI upfront, where just the day before we were told we just needed to pay our deductable. I just want to say that is just a terrible thing to do, especially after Christmas! Thank goodness we still have our freezer full of meat from Frank's parents' stay with us, and a pantry full of food storage! That'll get us by.

Then, after waiting another 20 min., a nurse took us back to the sedation room where we waited another 20 min. for someone to come and explain the sedation procedure, and then waited another 20 minutes for the nurses to come back and insert Kennedy's IV tube. The nurses were so great an inserting her tube, and Kennedy only cried for about 20 seconds...she's so tough! We then waited another 10 minutes to be taken back to the MRI room and recovery area, where they then inserted the sedation medication which knocked her out pretty quick. The procedure took about 55 minutes. Then she brought out to the recovery area and laid on a bed until she woke up, which was about 90 minutes after the MRI. We were told we wouldn't be talking to any doctors that day, but upon leaving the hospital, a Dr. Boyer, the president of physicians stopped us in the hall and asked if we were the Schofields. When we told him we were, he said he needed to talk with us about the MRI scans. I was really nervous! But, he told us the same things we were suspecting..a venous mass growing on the back of her neck which is most likely a hemangioma, with no spinal chord involvement (which was why the MRI was scheduled--great news!)

However, just last week, the pediatric dermatologist said she's not convinced it's a hemangioma, and was going to be conferencing about it with some more specialists, and then let us know. Kennedy woke up really happy, and really loopy! It was as though her head was a lead weight and she couldn't keep it up. She just wanted juice to drink, and when she was able to keep down a few bites of crackers with it, we were allowed to leave. We had to really watch her the rest of the day because she really had a hard time keeping her balance. But the next day, she was back to her little self again.