I had an MRI yesterday for my lower back. It will suffice to say that my back is a pain in the rear. More importantly, no one had ever previously or satisfactorily described the MRI experience for me. I arrived totally unprepared, a lamb to the slaughter, with A1 tied around my neck!
I followed the kind radiologist to a changing room, stripped, and donned a pair of blue pajamas.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines are gigantic steel doughnuts, through which you are threaded like the proverbial camel through the eye of a needle. Upon first encountering an MRI machine, you will size it up and say, sure . . . I'll stick my head into that . . . heck, I'll stick my head in anything once! (And frankly, I'm amazed that my genes are the ones that survived!).
But the catch is, that you cannot assess the MRI experience from outside the doughnut. In short, I now am convinced that I know what it is like to be burried alive in a microwave oven, with someone trying to rescue me with a buzzsaw and a cowbell. This, ladies and gentlemen is what needs to be said, before you go gently into that good-doughnut hole with nothing more than a pair of used blue pajamas to defend yourself.
(No! No! Fight the dying of the light!!!!)
Why they put me in the machine head first, when they had to do my lower back, is a mystery. But let's face it, bored MRI technicians have probably wagered on who in the lobby will be the first to break. Speaking of which, I must proceed . . .
I'm not usually clausterphobic, but it was tight. My elbows could not rest at my side, so I had to recline, Dracula-style, in the tube ... only to be further tested with easy listening music (Don't You Want Me Baby and Give Me One Reason are two of the songs I remember playing).
"Mr. Weinbrenner, there will be some banging . . . and the table will get warm. But you will at first start out very cold, as we blow fresh air over you during the process."
I tried to look tough, and relaxed, as she cranked me back into the nether regions of my doughnut hole. Whew, I thought. This *is* clausterphobic! You can do it, though. Focus and relax. You are one with the blowing air, like a butterfly soaring over-
"Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack - Don't you want me Oh-o-o- thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack . . . . . Give me one reason to stay here . . . thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack . . ."
Were the songs really designed to be so ironic, or was I being tortured on a particularly lucky day?
I began to feel my flesh slowly burning. Ever so lightly. As though I was receiving a chemical peel while my head, in a bucket, was being struck by a cowbell.
Finally the machine stopped thwacking. Thank God, I thought.
"Okay Mr. Weinbrenner. The first set is done. Only fourteen more minutes to go. Click."
Ooooooo. Nooooooo. I thought. I'll talk. Really. I'll make crap up. Just let me out- - um, no. I have to do this. Relax. Breath. Be still. You are sailing over the windswept snows of --Jeez, it's cold in here!
Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack . . .
Then again, I felt my flesh burning while being attacked with a cowbell. Lower this time. Ah, the burning flesh is showing signs of progress! Thank God my flesh is burning I thought, otherwise I would freeze to death.
Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, Take My Breath Awayyyyy, Thwack, thwack, etc.
While listening to the radio headphones, during my burial-- Suddenly! . . . an Emergency Broadcast System buzzer pierced the tranquility of my cowbell massage. Ank! Ank! Ank! Eeeeeeeee .... The alert about sent me through the MRI tube!! Heaven only knows what shot out of my other end. The "tornado" warning should have been a "torpedo warning." (Yes, it's raining tense g*y guys on Lake County Florida. Take cover.) I was never so relieved to find out it was *only* a tornado, and not that the MRI had jammed with me inside!
Upon emerging from my waterboarding, I told the technician what happened during the MRI. She calmly replied, "Why the machine is the safest place in the world to be during a tornado."
Really!? Really!? Inside a giant electromagnet is the safest place? Did you never catch one episode of the Hulk in the 1970s?
On a beach in Hawaii sucking on a Mai Tai and reading the funnies, is the safest place to be during a tornado in Florida. How about that?!
In short, I don't care if you SCUBA dive, or if you sleep in a bunk bed. MRI machines are no place for sick people. And for no one else who has not had a full body greasing, before being inserted in their oil drum.
Call me Vlad the impaler from now on. I eat MRI for breakfast! But lordy, check the weather forecast before you get inside!
