Just looked at my MRI scan

Just had a peak at the MRI scans that diagnosed me two years ago and I wish I hadn’t! I knew it was a bad idea - doh! But so fascinating having a look at your own brain - I shouldn’t be scared - it’s my body. Just not used to seeing it like that! And trying to work out which are the MS bits without really knowing is not a good idea - recipe for freaking yourself out.

Feel a bit weird now! Just wanted to share that…feeling less weird already just having written it down.

Fizz x

Hi yes I found it strange looking at the inside of my brain on the second occasion as the first trying to accept diagnosis and the number of lesions found. It erie because you see your own skeleton now which is weird as you hear/see archeologist finding skeletons from history all the bestx

My first MRI scan was after I was diagnosed with epilepsy so the possible scars on my scan didn’t worry me too much - I didn’t take anything in about the posiblilty of them being due to MS. Later scans using a newer MRI scanner allowed them to be interpreted as areas of inflamation not scar tissue. We all know what that points to!

What freaked me out was how large the ventricles in my brain are. Much bigger than on other people’s scans than I’ve seen. I still don’t know how to take that, but it does still freak me out!

Cool, isn’t it?!

I remember the first time I did some work at home on someone’s MRI. I called the kids in to see how amazing it was to be able to see someone’s brain in such detail. Were they impressed? Nope! Not remotely. All the wonder seems to have been knocked out of kids at such an early age these days :frowning:

If you want a bit of help working out what’s a lesion and what’s not, then I can help, but it’s good to remember that the number of lesions doesn’t relate very well to how bad someone’s MS is or will become, and the location of lesions doesn’t relate very well to symptoms. I think it’s fascinating regardless, but I am a complete geek!

Karen x

I’ve never been able to spot the lesions by myself, at home, despite having them pointed out to me in the consulting room. I think it takes a trained eye, unless you have one of those medical school pictures, with a big red arrow, pointing to the anomaly - LoL. It didn’t help that there were literally hundreds of pictures on the disc (the “slices”, I assume), so most of them probably don’t even have a lesion on them. Unless you know in advance which frames had lesions, is very hard to spot them, just browsing through.

I was relieved my brain didn’t look like Swiss cheese, and that, on the contrary, any damage was extraordinarily difficult to spot.

I know it’s childish, but the thing that continually strikes me is just how like a walnut it looks!

It’s strange, when you think about it, that we’re all controlled by a giant, magic walnut. The most complex bit of kit in the known universe, so it is said - but it resembles something that falls off a tree. WHY? I find that so bizarre.

Tina

When I saw mine back in September it was both cool and freaky! The pictures are incredible. However, that massive patch of white scaring at the top of my spine brought the whole reality of it home!