MRI Anyone?

I figured out tonight why I've never had an MRI before.

In spite of the one-size-fits-none gown and the opportunity to be stuffed into a tube like too much filling in a burrito, it really wasn't all that much fun.

Oh sure, I had high hopes after I had explained for the third time to entirely different (and seemingly uncommunicative people) that I had never, ever had metal inserted into my body, on either a temporary or permanent basis and for neither recreational nor medical purposes... I thought, hey, if they know about things that I would never dream of inserting into my body then they must be a little fun...

In fact, I got so tired of answering the metal question truthfully that I tried a little humor. The last time the technician asked me if I had ever had an operation, tattoo, worked as a welder or machinist, had an accident, or been involved in a situation that might leave even traces of metal in my person, I answered “absolutely not… but I’m not entirely sure what happened during my alien abduction.”

Of course, this was just foreplay to the forcible confinement. And, lucky for me, the technician I drew was a sadist. A great deal of my discomfort arose from my own mistaken set of assumptions. I had always imagined Magnetic Resonance Imaging to be state of the art technology. What I didn’t know was that any magnetism generated is seemingly the result of firing canons at you while you hyperventilate in a crock pot sized chamber. I shouldn’t complain. According to my tech, I moved a number of times necessitating the restart and the elongation of the entire process. Apparently, while breathing, I was failing to consider the intolerance of the machine for any movement whatsoever and also my own technician’s entitlement to a 15 minute break.

By the time she released me (well, she may have gone late to her break, but at least she got to see me with my hospital gown up around my chest), I felt that she had probably seen just about all that there was to see internally and externally, but whether or not there would be any useful images for my doctor to see was doubtful. The entire experience left me contemplating more pleasant ways to spend my time in future such as spraying Raid in my own eyes.