He said that if this one came back high too, I'd have to get an MRI, which I'm really fucking scared of doing 😭

I've had to do this years ago. Your endocrinologist is checking to see if there are tumours growing on your pituitary gland, which are mostly benign but can still cause significant problems if they're left unchecked. If your endo recommends an MRI, don't skip it! Even benign pituitary tumours can cause serious hormonal problems if they're not addressed.

The MRI itself isn't too bad - it sounds like you're inside a floppy disk drive as it's reading and writing a disk (if you don't know what this is, YouTube! (now I feel really old...)).

MRIs do get quite loud - like standing near a large concert speaker and subwoofer, so earplugs are usually required, due to the very large currents flowing through the MRI coil (magnetic flux) to take pictures of your body part. The very first MRI image they took of my head made me jump a little bit because the magnetic flux was so loud it vibrated me a bit, but once you're used to the sensation it's pretty fascinating to experience. MRIs are absolutely not painful, just weird.

Perhaps the scariest part (if you're not fond of needles) is the dye contrast they can inject for some part of the imaging process to quote "light the pituitary gland up like a christmas tree on the scan". It's just a simple IV injection, and not that bad (for what it's worth, I hate needles).

MRIs can be claustrophobic, so if this is something you think you may have issues with see if your endo is able to prescribe a short acting anti-anxiety medication to help with the experience.

Overall my session took about 50 minutes, was boring as hell as I obviously couldn't read or do anything other than imitate a statue (moving causes blurry images) but it's not a terrifying experience. It can be unsettling if you've never had one before, but they're genuinely not scary machines.

Realistically, CTs are scarier because you're being shot with high energy x-rays to take an image, but they're also not painful. MRIs just exploit physics to take images with a huge magnetic coil. There are a few YouTube videos on the experience.

Don't worry about the whole metal and MRI thing - you'll be extensively screened before you're allowed anywhere near the MRI, because those things are extremely expensive to repair after an emergency quench (dumping the liquid helium from the machine to 'turn off' the magnet). MRI operators are very protective of their machines... 😂