claustrophobia preventing me from getting needed scans. Help?

My husband has the same issues. He cannot lie down flat and he’s extremely claustrophobic. We found a MRI group who does open MRI, but they couldn’t get him flat — so we ended up at a facility that does MRI’s sitting down.

Might be worth a try to look up. We had to travel around 50 miles (one way) to the one we went to.

Thank you. I will have to consider that. I currently use Mayo Clinic for virtually all health care, and I hate to go outside the system. But I might have to.

I can lie flat - my only problem is the claustrophobia. But I understand many people do better sitting, and that might do it for me. Likewise, open MRI. In the last year, I had 2 MRI's and one PET scan. The latter is as confining as an MRI and I had no warning even though I had asked beforehand - it was awful but I (barely) succeeded.

There are imaging facilities all over the place here in AZ (Scottsdale, Phoenix). Likewise,

@rotate That must be so frustrating to have this dilemma!

I have claustrophobia in imaging machines and elevators. What has worked for me is to "go within" my mind. I assign a color or pattern to each noise the machine makes. Then my mind creates a symphony of creativity, colors intertwining into fantastic views! It keeps me distracted. And does so much to lessen the anxiety of the experience.

Do you think something like that might work for you? I know it takes an effort to address the confinement, but it could help you.
Ginger

As long as the imaging isn’t for your head, I found headphones with music helped me immensely.

I also struggle with MRI’s but I found the larger ones that helped me greatly, I once tried a sedative given to me and it was too strong so I couldn’t lie still during the procedure and the imaging was not great. It’s really very debilitating to suffer from this condition and I’m always worried when I have to go through this, medication is helpful but we have to provide it ourselves.

@frouke , my first experience with MRI was for my head and this was really confining having my head held down with straps under a cage like thing that went over my head, this was very confining and hard to endure but somehow we do our best to get through this.

MRI's are my least favorite medical procedure. I've found if I close my eyes and pretend the noise of the machine is industrial music I can get through it. If I open my eyes it's all over.

@gingerw That;s really creative.

Unfortunately, I don't tihnk it would work for me. I'm just too sensitive.

@frouke Thanks. I have access to sedative meds, but the amount I would need is well beyond the maximum Mayo Clinic allows.

@rotate I also have Ativan for anxiety and it’s fairly helpful but I use too many for the MRI and it ruined test because I moved around too much, when they rescheduled me for another MRI I was given the larger open machine and it was completely tolerable to get through it with just one pill, believe me it is all about the type of machine that they have, I have been told by people who don’t suffer from claustrophobia that they can’t get into the older more confining machines.