Last month, if my count is correct, I had my 20th
MRI. And in those 20 MRIs, I’ve learned some valuable lessons that I feel I absolutely
must share—lessons that will comfort you on your next tube adventure. Or
lessons that will rattle you to the very core and make you shudder in
anticipation of your next trip inside The Tunnel of Doom. You never imagine something
is going to go wrong. Until it does. Oh, Geez.
Now I know what you are probably thinking: Dave is
going to tell a story about how he once accidentally forgot to remove his barbell-style
tongue stud and for 45 minutes his tongue, literally, was glued to the sidewall
of the 3-Tesla machine (featuring a powerful open-bore magnet) rendering him
speechless for the first time in his 47 years. And how it took three medical
techs to extricate Mr. Bexfield’s tongue from said magnet by using a plastic
knife and a pair of sporks from someone’s well-timed Burger King takeout. Ah, you’d
be wrong. But close.
As an MRI aficionado—and one can call oneself an
aficionado after shooting the tube nearly two dozen times—I’ve amassed an
impressive MRI resume. I’ve experienced short MRIs (20 minutes) and long MRIs
(1.5 hours). I’ve been in open MRIs and closed MRIs, weak MRIs and strong MRIs,
and portable MRIs and permanent MRIs. I’ve gotten MRIs with contrast and MRIs
without contrast. I’ve had spine MRIs and brain MRIs. But nothing prepared me
for one fateful afternoon with Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O'Malley
Armstrong.
Now, there has always been one reliable constant
during every imaging session: that telltale MRI siren call, a racket akin to a
cross between whales mating, a symphony of jackhammers, and a pig stuck in a
well. Chk, chk, chk, EEE, EEE, EEE, UHH, UHH, UHH, D’OH, D’OH, D’OH.
Fortunately, some MRI facilities offer entertainment to keep your mind off all
the incessant whale/jackhammer/pig clattering, usually in the form of music (I’ve
even watched several feature-length films, how trick is that?!, but that’s not
typical).
For one of my MRIs, I made the decision to select
a Dido CD, Life for Rent. It seemed like a genius choice at the time—soothing,
but not too soothing, with enough defiance to resonate with someone who has
multiple sclerosis. The first track: White Flag, a song about not surrendering,
not giving up. Perfect… until 30 seconds in, when disaster struck, my own
personal tongue-stud catastrophe. Yup. The CD started to skip.
I had a choice between two terrible options. I
could squeeze the “emergency” bulb to signal the MRI tech that there was a
problem, potentially triggering an urgent rush to aid a patient in distress,
shutting down the MRI, and delaying every poor individual after me—all over a
skipping CD. Or I could suck it up for 20 minutes. You don’t all need to call
me a hero, but I wasn’t going to raise that white flag. Oh, hell no. I bravely took
one for the team.
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| After my harrowing experience, I was presented with the Dido CD. It hasn’t skipped since. |
