I
have mixed feelings about MRIs. Actually, that’s not quite true. I have several
strong feelings about MRIs, mostly fear and
loathing.
At
a rational level, I understand that some nice, technologically advanced MRI
identified my brain tumor and enabled all the wonderful follow-on treatments I
received.
Emotionally,
though, I still get the heebie jeebies before and during every MRI.
For
starters, every time my sixth month MRI check-up pops up on the calendar, it
reminds me that, yes, I still have some unreachable and un-removable brain
tumor remnants left in my head. And, those remnants might just
decide to wake up some day and wreak havoc with the rest of my brain.
When
I climb into a MRI machine and am locked in, I somehow get the foreboding notion that this is what it feels like to
be in a coffin and have the lid nailed shut.
And when I get especially
paranoid, I wonder if the medical technicians aren’t experimenting with one of
those new combination coffin maker-grave digger gadgets.
If I remember correctly, those machines dig their own holes and fill the dirt
back in automatically – putting lots of scary-looking grave diggers out of work
and saving funeral homes lots of time, money and effort.
If,
of course, you have some strange thought of trying to calm your nerves during the ordeal by meditating during the MRI, you must be completely deaf or live in Colorado and be smoking some newly
legal marijuana, because the noises inside
the MRI should wake up the dead, let alone distract anybody trying to
meditate. I say "should" because I haven't seen any zombies walking around in the nuclear medicine department ...although I haven't looked all that closely at all the technicians.
I
described the cornucopia of reactions I had to my first MRI in Chief
Complaint, Brain Tumor - http://www.chief-complaint.com/
- and have excerpted it here:
“... the doctor recommended that I have a magnetic resonance
imaging (“MRI”) test. For the uninitiated, MRI tests are normally scheduled for
folks who have something lousy going on inside.
To
take an MRI, you go to a lab hidden deep in some medical facility where they
store the really high-powered medical equipment. Over in a corner you’ll
probably see a lab technician peering at a backlit green screen that reminds
you of the sonar technology they must use on a nuclear submarine.
You
are instructed to take off all your jewelry (this took about a nanosecond) as
the technician asks you questions like, “Do you have any metal in your body?”
“Have you ever had a joint replacement using metal?” “Does being enclosed in
very small space and having abnormally loud sounds clang and bang around your
head drive you berserk?”
While
I may be wrong, I think that no matter what your answer is, you are then told
to lie down on a cloth-covered surfboard at a perpendicular angle to the MRI.
It’s so the technicians can easily slide you into the machine and bombard you
with x-rays. I’m just guessing on the kind of rays, they could be beta rays for
all I know. (Actually, I was hoping that they weren’t beta rays because, as
everybody who’s ever worked in software knows, the “beta” version is pretty
iffy stuff.) After you lie down, the technicians strap you down and quickly run
out of the room.
No, it isn’t reassuring.
The
machine started and the vibrations reminded me of some large ship leaving port.
It began as a low hum that pulsed and shook. Abruptly, the promised clanging
and banging commenced at erratic and irregular intervals. It felt as if
something was really wrong with the machine, like maybe they forgot to add oil
during the last seventy-five-thousand-mile overhaul or the thing needed new
brake pads.
While
I half-expected the MRI to explode or shoot me out the front like torpedo, it
didn’t.
And
I walked away thinking, “Boy, I’ll bet I won’t have to do that again.” Little
did I know that I should’ve quickly joined the MRI frequent scanner club for
the “points.”
Copyright:
<a href='http://www.123rf.com/profile_leventkonuk'>leventkonuk / 123RF
Stock Photo</a>
Copyright:
<a href='http://www.123rf.com/profile_fergregory'>fergregory / 123RF
Stock Photo</a>
