Things I have learned in the past week of medical treatment:

Be persistent.

Be patient.

You can never really know if you have claustrophobia until you have an MRI. Apparently I don't, but then I did stop the proceedings to put my arms out over my head to feel less crowded. Plus, it wasn't my head in the machine, just most of my body. If it was my head, I would have needed general anesthesia.

Being able to breathe slowly and deeply is something that is best requested ahead of time, as opposed to ordered on the spot.

Being in an MRI is not unlike being toasted, or perhaps baked. Your temperature increases from the inside, so you feel warmer there and don't sweat. Oh, btw: your temperature goes up by one degree. Those of you who think one degree doesn't make much of a difference - I had to take a break as I felt I was being roasted and it was getting more laborious to just lay back and take it easy, which was my only strategy during the session.

Magazines in waiting rooms are always outdated, sometimes comically so if they are celebrity-obsessed ones - they already read like history texts.

Hospital workers are good people for the most part, but if they seem rather indifferent, consider the dullness of their surroundings.

If you are a female patient with a large uterus, you may as well give up hope that people will stop asking you, at some point in your treatment, if you are pregnant. Even if you keep saying 'no' on paper, upon being questioned, and upon being tested, they will keep asking, just to be sure. Even after an ultrasound (with not just one but three people taking turns), an MRI and vividly recounted personal stories of this and that, they will still ask, to be sure. Consider yourself to be an elephant that many blind people are trying to diagnose. I can only assume that if I was pregnant, they would also keep asking. Um, right?

Right?

Okay.

So, then: I will go under, be knocked out, for a final test this week, and then they will figure out what to do with me. I'm going for a chest x-ray and blood test on Monday and will be feeling dull, awkwardly heavy and vaguely impatient. Besides the obvious I don't feel ill and that's good; I'm relatively calm and peaceful, all things considered...