People have been telling me for years that I should have my head examined, and yesterday I did. It’s standard procedure for people who have sudden speech problems, even though I’ve already solved the problem with Botox treatments to the vocal cords. (Seriously. More on that another time.)
I was told that I should request the “open MRI,” not the narrow tube version that makes claustrophobic people go nuts. I’m not especially claustrophobic, but I always go for whatever option that strangers tell me is “better.” It saves a lot of thinking. Here’s how the MRI process works.
First you fill out a questionnaire designed to discover if you have any metal hidden in your body, such as shrapnel or IUDs or surgical leave-behinds and whatnot. This is important because the MRI is a gigantic magnet.
I’m almost positive that I don’t have an IUD, but the idea of metal ripping through my body and coming out of my ear really made me think about it carefully. I’m not what you call a good detail person, and it’s exactly the sort of thing I would forget having done, perhaps as a college prank. I took a chance and checked “no.”
I didn’t know how forgiving the MRI machine would be, so when I got to the question that asked if I ever worked around metal shaving, I started to panic. I spent countless hours in my youth working with an Etch-a-Sketch, and I don’t know what that grey stuff in there really is. I’d hate to die because I forgot to disclose how many times I tried and failed to draw a circle using only two knobs. But I also didn’t want to appear too concerned. For some reason I felt it was important to impress the MRI technician with my unnatural state of calm. So I took a chance and checked “no.”
I was eager – perhaps too eager – to wear the little green robe that would display my ass, since that is my best feature, and I hardly ever get a chance to flaunt it. But all they asked me to do was empty my pockets because they were only going to stick my head in the machine.
The MRI room is straight out of a cheap science fiction movie. The device itself is disturbingly large, not unlike a giant waffle maker. The device emits a continuous and thundering heartbeat pulse even before you use it. I guess it’s idling. Later, when my head was inside, it would sound like a jack hammer fighting a phaser.
The technician instructed me to recline on the mechanical platform and insert ear plugs. Then she placed a birdcage-like device on my head and stuffed some padding around my neck. She told me not to move my head. . . for an hour.
That’s right. I couldn’t move my head for an hour or else it was a do-over.
Can you guess how much your face itches when you are wearing a bird cage on your head and unable to move for an hour? (Hint: A lot)
My strategy was to nap, and hope I didn’t move while sleeping. This was complicated by the fact that the technician gave me a signaling device to squeeze in case I panicked and needed to come out. The device was like a squeeze toy on a cable that I was to hold in my hand. My worry was that I would fall asleep and have the sort of dream where I would – through no conscious fault of my own – start yanking that cord like a monkey on a stubborn coconut.
It was a long hour, with one break toward the middle to inject some juice into my bloodstream that would make my brain easier to see. When it was over, the technician explained that the digital picture would be sent directly to my doctor where he could view it on the computer. I saw this as an opportunity to pursue one of my more obscure hobbies – using sentences that have never before been uttered. I asked, “Can you ask him to e-mail me a picture of my brain?”
The answer was no. Apparently that’s a big file. But I enjoyed asking.