And now this was it. She was about to get answers.
Upstairs, she gave her name, and the nurse whisked Rylee straight into a well-oiled machine that moved her smoothly and thoroughly through weight and height, blood draws, and on to an eye doctor checking for changes in eyesight and eye tracking.
She had to put on a shirt, button it, and unbutton it. They tested her strength, her ability to balance on toes and heels. They hammered her knees and had her close her eyes to feel the vibration from a tuning fork. And of course, they checked her short-term memory.
The nurse who took her through these steps was Rose’s friend from nursing school.
Rylee wondered if Rose had seen in Rylee’s file that they shared a name, and for a fellow Rose, Nurse Rose was willing to take extra steps to help.
Rylee liked that idea: the Sisterhood of the Thorns and Roses.
So named in her imagination because, very obviously, they both lead prickly lives.
Now, Rylee shivered in her blue hospital gown, sitting on the edge of the MRI table, part nerves, part freezing temperatures that made her skin white and her goose-fleshed.
The superconducting magnets needed to be kept cold. This was a necessary cold, unlike the frigid temperatures at Rose’s doctor’s office that just felt punitive.
The tech was having some difficulties with the computer in her little glass booth. The first glitch of the day. She was dressed in scrubs with a thick fleece sweatshirt over top, a hat, and fingerless gloves. It must be like working in a fridge all day.
Rylee knew her symptoms in general weren’t caused by anxiety.
But today, she was anxious.
This test was a big deal, and the results could change the trajectory of her life.
The ease of this day was throwing Rylee.
No man would understand the gaslighting that females go through. Not even Rylee’s dad, though he’d listened to her complain for years.
When her dad went to the doctor, he told them about his family history and explained his symptoms. It was Bing. Bang. Boom. Done. One doctor. One visit. And straight through to diagnosis and treatment.
Rylee tried not to seethe. It would make lying still in the MRI machine that much harder.
Getting to this point had been a marathon.
A marathon in someone else’s shoes that pinched her toes numb while wearing a fifty-pound pack. It had been all uphill, and no one, until this last stretch, had offered her a banana or a bottle of water.
She was at the finish line.
She’d cross through and either get the diagnosis or get the reprieve.
Yeah, Rylee knew it was going to be an MS diagnosis. And she was ready for it. She’d already decided on three different medical trials she’d throw her hat into, starting with John’s. It was like being a kind of explorer, heading out into the wild unknown. She was up for that.
Rylee could do hard things.
She had broken molds, had faced down death, and had been brave in her career.
Something about the way the medical world treated her—women in general—had worn her down, made her wonder about her mental health. Self-doubt, now that was a hell of a cudgel. Bring on life-or-death scenarios where she trained to bea force of good. But going to war for basic care, to have her self-advocacy be dismissed with the shake of a head, to have WW written in her chart—whiney woman—over and over.
It took something from her.
“All right, Ms. Jones, you can lie back now on the platform.”
Rylee scooted back, feeling a bit cottony and off-kilter. She arranged herself in a way that she thought she could maintain for the duration.
Then the table slid into the machine.
The attendant read the instructions over the loudspeaker.
