Halloween

I used to go to the Fruit and Vegetable market weekly, or every ten days.  But it's a challenge to go - parking can be hard and it's not quite as close as Carrefour - so I haven't been since we returned from summer.

However.  When it comes to Halloween, I have to go because orange pumpkins are so expensive here.  So in the midst of working on Fall Festival decorations, I headed over to the market last week.  I hesitated, and actually asked Eli whether he thought the kids would notice.  "I think you should get them" he texted back, and so off I went.

I went up the rows of produce looking for the best pumpkins, and decided that a particular pile looked promising.  A bunch of men were shopping at the same vendor, and took it upon themselves to ensure that I received the best quality produce.  When I pointed at a pumpkin (chosen for shape, of course), it was passed to me and rejected by my friends, which led to me googling "jack-o-lantern" and showing all of them what I was doing with the pumpkin.  They mostly smiled but I'm sure they couldn't believe that I intended use my pumpkin as a decoration.  One of them still helped me carry all my pumpkins to the car, which was nice.

When the kids got home, they were cranky until they spotted the pumpkins on the counter:  "LIZZIE!! SHE GOT THE PUMPKINS!!"  So I felt that the whole trip (which was perfectly pleasant) was really worth it.

They designed their own jack-o-lanterns this year.

The story of my MRI

I told Eli that my blog posts are painfully uninspired and that I suppose if I wrote one daily like I did in the early London days, I'd be better.  Stretching the muscle and all that.  It takes a lot after living in Oman for nearly four years (!) to make me stop and shake my head but I had a head-shaking experience a couple of weeks ago that's worthy of an attempt at a post.

I've been having shoulder pain for the past four months and while I was in the US, it became worse.  I think I injured it upon arrival at baggage claim, and then I ran all summer instead of really using it.  My physical therapist (a lovely British woman) was shocked at how much movement I'd lost since early June.  She proclaimed my impingement issue solved (because I religiously did my exercises over the summer), but said that I was now presented with capsulitis, aka "frozen shoulder".  I've been seeing her twice a week for sessions which are fairly painful as she bends and stretches my shoulder in directions it has no interest in moving.  Some days it feels like things are improving but other days it definitely does not.

Anyway, two weeks ago she suggested that I get an MRI.  Her clinic doesn't have the machine, so she suggested I go to a clinic called Al Afaq, because it's the cheapest shoulder MRI around (95 rial versus 120).  It probably seems stupid to shop for a bargain on an MRI, BUT we are paying our healthcare costs until we meet our deductible. (I would love to explain how our insurance works but I don't understand it despite my best attempt - and once I was so frustrated about this that I actually wept.)

I had a sense that I wouldn't enjoy having an MRI, but on television they don't look so awful.  So I agreed to go but made the appointment a week in the future.  Here, if you need an MRI you call and basically go get an MRI that day or the next.  So this was a delay tactic on my part.

I arrived at the clinic - and I use that term loosely because it was actually a couple of rooms with four people in them:  two Omani ladies, one doctor and one technician.  The receptionists had enough English between them to check me in, until we got to the question about if I'd had surgery before and if I had any metals in my body.  Commence very awkward conversation about IUD.  (Is that metal?!  And, I didn't even think about my dental fillings until I was already in the tomb.)

Following this conversation, they put me into a changing room and handed me a garment that I could not fit over my head.  I kept removing it and looking for the fastener (recognizing that it could not be a zipper or a snap), finally put my clothes back on, went out and told them I couldn't fit the dress over my head.  I was embarrassed, but they didn't seem surprised and went and got me another one, which I mercifully got on with a fairly strong tug.

When I entered the room with the imaging machine, I was relieved because it's what they call an "open" MRI.  Let me just say that this is bullshit.  It appears to be open.  But they made me lay down with my right shoulder (that's not the MRI shoulder) closest to the machine.  I kept saying, "no, it's my left shoulder, shouldn't I lay the other direction?" and they kept nodding at me and telling me to lay down.  At which point it dawned on me that I was going to be deep inside the machine even if it wasn't a tunnel.

So I decided to close my eyes the entire time.

They got me situated, I asked about forty thousand questions ("if I have to push the button and stop, do we have to start from the very beginning?"  "How many sequences will you do?"); they told me not to breath too deeply and they slid me into the machine, and also up toward the top of it so I was snug as a bug.  (It turns out I may present with mild claustrophobia; but then again, would anybody find this enjoyable?)

It was every bit as terrible as I thought it might be -- it is SO loud and the noise is unpredictable and startling at times,  and it lasted forever (I think only 40 minutes in the end).  When he finally came in my ear and said it was over, I allowed myself to open my eyes and found it difficult to wait the five seconds until they slid me out.

After I got dressed (was needlessly worried about getting the dress thing off; I managed to get it over my apparently large head on the first try), I went out to pay and was informed that I needed to use cash.  Sigh.

The good news is that nothing too terrible is wrong with my shoulder and PT should resolve my capsulitis.  And now I have the rest of my life to dread MRIs.