"Patient has a small AVM in the brain" Part I

Ok, now that I have shared my happy news about the incredible shrinking AVM, I feel I have to share my frustrations with how I actually found out about said shrinkage. My surgeon recommended a follow-up MRI one year after gamma knife surgery. Let me just say, it was one very long year. I wanted to schedule the MRI a few weeks early, when I was on break from school. That way, if the news was not good, I would have a whole week to be splayed out on the couch in an incoherent, alcohol-soaked sobfest. It's just good planning. I found that it was poor planning to be diagnosed with an AVM and be told I needed brain surgery during law school finals, so I guess it just comes from experience. Anyhoo, I went for the MRI, and the tech refused to tell me if I still had an AVM (they know but won't tell!) He insisted that the radiologist had to read it and do the report himself. From experience, I knew that this meant that the AVM was still there. Techs are all too happy to take the wind out of the radiologist's sails when it's good news, but I have never met a tech who wanted to pull the rug out from under a radiologist when the news is bad. The only time an MRI tech actually says, "we're not allowed to read the MRI," is when something is not right, so I guess it is pretty much the same as if he read it. I am not a radiologist, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, so on my way out of the hospital, I ordered up a piping hot copy of the films on CD, and went straight home, only stopping for a 12 pack of Heineken. In case of emergency, remove cap.