MRI In Brief.

I went for the MRI scan on my legs today. The letter which calls you for the appointment includes a questionnaire to fill in. It includes things like:

Have you had any operations in the last eight weeks?

Do you have any metal things inserted in your body?

Do you wear dentures?

Have you ever had a body part fall off in consequence of having been intimate with a leper?

So you ring the No option to all of them and hand it in at reception.

And then an Indian woman comes and asks you all the same questions again before inviting you to take all your clothes off except your socks, shoes and underwear, and shows you where the scrubs are to change into.

And then you go and sit in another room where a woman from Lincolnshire asks you all the same questions again before telling you that they’ll be ready in about five minutes.

And then they invite you to lie on a bed and offer you music to listen to through a headset, only it’s mainstream rock and pop which you don’t like so you decline the offer. ‘What sort of music do you like?’ asks the young Italian radiographer. ‘Classical,’ you reply because it’s the easiest option. ‘Ah, classical,’ says the young Italian guy, evidently warming to you because Italians think they invented everything classical.

And then you start sliding in and out of this tunnel thing which makes an awful lot of loud and strange noises so you can’t hear the music anyway, while an electronic voice disguised as a woman keeps telling you to remain still while the table moves. This is confusing until you realise that ‘table’ is the term electronic voices use when they actually mean ‘bed.’ But since you’re not in a particularly rebellious mood, you remain still as ordered.

And when it’s all over they let you out of the MRI suite and tell you not to go home until your cannula has been removed, at which point you wonder whether there has ever been an example of somebody walking out with a big plastic thing sticking into his arm.

And then the same Indian woman who asked you the damn fool questions comes and removes the cannula and you head homeward. And on the way you witness a serious near miss because some idiot coming the other way is engaged in overtaking another car on an unlit road on a bend and at speed. And it’s all very exciting. 

But at least the young woman radiographer impressed you because she exhibited just the right combination of efficiency and familiarity. And you told her so because that’s what you do. And she said ‘thank you.’ And that’s about it.