IRM

Because Lilian was delivered by emergency c-section three months early she had more than her fair share of difficulties, one of which was not breathing for over 6 minutes. The medical staff were concerned about damage to her brain and suggested she have an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) as soon as she was stable enough to be removed from the intensive care unit for a couple of hours.

A few weeks later whilst on holiday at St Thomas' hospital having her kidney cared for Lilian was given her first MRI scan. She was still very little and didn't move about too much so they gave her the scan without anaesthetics (you have to be absolutely still otherwise the image blurs). I was given the honour of sitting in the MRI room with her whilst they performed the scan. It's a horrible experience and is really really noisy. I was wearing massive ear phones and I could easily still hear the grinding/pumping/echoing/pulsating noise quite clearly. I'm surprised Lilian slept throughout but she did and it was all over in about 30 minutes. Mette was a bag of nerves outside in the waiting rooms but the nurses were very gentle.

The results took a few weeks but came back with only small issues that should be looked at again when Lilian turns four. However this all happened before Lilian was diagnosed with Costello Syndrome which introduces its own reasons to have frequent MRI scans. More on this in the future once we get our heads around it all. We went for an MRI today but as Lilian has had a respitiroty infection in the last six weeks she can't go under elective anaesthetics so we've rescheduled for early December.

I'm a fan of Serge Gainsbourg and it so happened that his daughter Charlotte realeased a single called IRM (french for MRI) during the same time Lilian had her first scan. Charlotte had to have MRI scans after she was involved in a car crash. The song, which I've linked to below, is intertwined with the sort of noise the MRI scan emits which I mentioned earlier. I bought the album for Lilian on vinyl so she can remember how magnetic her personality was when she was a little baby.