Weekend Plans Post: The MRI
So I went in for one of them there MRI thingies. I’d never had one, only seen them on the doctor shows, and so I was vaguely curious as to what it’d entail. They told me “no dietary restrictions, you don’t have to fast or anything” but, just to be careful, I started the morning with a bottle of water and that’s it.
Got to the hospital about 7:20 for my 7:30 appointment, the lady came out at 7:29 and called my name, we walked back to the room and she asked me my birthday and she told me that I was to change out of my outfit (pjs, for the record) and change into a hospital robe and hospital pants. She told me that the pants were optional. “My kinda party!”, I said, the way that she hears 30 times a day. I got changed. About 10 seconds after I tied the tie to my robe, the MRI tech yelled that he was coming in and he asked me my name and birthday and asked if I had any surgeries.
“Nope. Nothing of note.”
“Any metal in your body?”
“Just dental work and whatever the CIA put in there.”
“Well, this machine will play havoc with the CIA equipment. Any pacemaker? Blood glucose monitor?”
“Would prison tattoos cause a problem?”
He paused and explained that they might, given the inks available in prison… “Do you have any of those?”
“No.”
“Well, one patient I had did have them and he said that the tattoos got really, really hot during the procedure.” He lowered his voice and said “The prison tattoos weren’t very good.”
We commiserated.
He walked me to the machine and had me remove my glasses. “When the voice tells you to relax, that means just breathe easily. She’ll tell you to take a deep breath and hold it… when she says relax, just exhale and go back to breathing like normal.” I got on the machine and he asked me what kind of music I wanted to listen to during the procedure.
“90’s Trip-hop. Just start it with Tricky’s ‘Christiansands’ and let it run from there.”
“Cool.”
He put earplugs in my ears and put headphones on me and left. Shortly after that, I heard his voice say “We don’t have that music. What do you want to listen to?”
“90’s Pop, I guess.”
A second later, the opening chords to “Hit Me Baby, One More Time” came in through the headphones. And then, in order (occasionally punctuated by a voice telling me to take a deep breath, hold it, then relax):
I Want It That Way
Wannabe
Livin’ the Vida Loca
All That She Wants
Gangster’s Paradise
Waiting for Tonight
And then it was done. A new guy game in and I was kind of surprised and he admitted that he wasn’t the other guy. I put on my glasses and got changed back into my pajamas and that was it.
I had some idle thoughts about being in the MRI machine itself… the roof of the space I was in was about 6 inches away, too close to have me scratch my nose if all of a sudden I felt my nose get itchy (WHICH IT DID ABOUT HALFWAY THROUGH GANGSTER’S PARADISE) but it wasn’t a very long procedure and it felt like I barely had to be there at all.
Like, I would have preferred to have dropped off my body and come back a half hour later after getting something to eat.
But there it is and they told me that someone would call me in a couple of days and… well, the only thing floating around my head is a short story about a zombie apocalypse hitting while some guy is in an MRI machine.
And this weekend will be devoted to the usual stuff. Grocery shopping, maybe hit Costco, Marianne’s friends coming over for breakfast on Saturday, then a game night Saturday night. Ah, normalcy.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Featured image is “The Fly Song”. Photo taken by Maribou.)
Last Sunday we got a new kitten. This was not planned. That morning, after feeding the cats in the bedroom, I heard a cat crying. I tracked it down the garage, and eventually the hood of my wife’s car. She popped the hood, and I saw the little tortoiseshell cat on top of the engine, but by the time I had the hood propped, she was headed out of sight, and I couldn’t grab her in time. We tried a few things, but eventually I decided to put the hood down, but not latched all the way. When I went out to check later, she was curled up asleep near the battery. She did not stir when I lifted the hood, and I was able to grab her and transfer her to a kitten carrier.
I think the kitten came from work. We have a few ferals around the plant. Often, when I leave, there is a cat that hides from the sun under my car. On Thursday, this cat was accompanied by kittens. I saw two of them. I think the new one is a third cat that I did not see, because she was in my car. It’s possible that we heard her, but assumed it was one of our cats, and didn’t realize she was in the garage. At some point, she moved into my wife’s car.
I called the vet to see if they could see her, and their answering service reminded me that it was Sunday. We put her in the bathroom that has been our usual “cat quarantine” and left her with some food, but mostly left her alone. We occasionally checked on her, but she didn’t eat. After some google searching, we rubbed some simple syrup on her gums, and eventually she ate the food. We were careful about feeding her, because of concerns with refeeding syndrome. I figured she would be better off going one more day with “not enough food” than to take the chance of causing problems by giving her too much. We fed her a little more that evening, and we got a little more hopeful about her survival chances when she ate all that, but there was still some worry that she might be sick or have some other issue that might jeopardize her survival. She is also a little ninja. Every time we would go check on her, she would be hiding in a new spot, and it would take a minute to find her.
Monday I had to work, and I spend most of the day waiting for my wife to give me the vet report. Turned out she was very healthy. Also, despite being feral and about 8-weeks old, she has taken very well to people. She will still hide and his when first approached, but she will let us pet her or pick her up without any attempt to bite or scratch. If you put her in your lap and start to pet her, she quickly relaxes and starts purring. Yesterday, she finally started playing with a string toy (though she had been playing with stuff in the bathroom when we were not around) and grooming herself. She’s still timid. She still gives me an initial hiss when I bring her food. After that, she is as sweet as can be.
My wife has been home with her all week. I have only been able to spend limited time with her in the evenings. I suspect a good portion of my weekend will be spent locked in the bathroom with Peanut Butter. She is still in medical quarantine, but by next weekend, she will probably be moved to “social quarantine,” which is the toilet area of the master bedroom. There, she will have access to the other cats under the door, and we can begin the introduction process.Report
This has made my day. This is wonderful news.
Let me give you info about something that was not a thing in the 90’s but is a *HUGE* advancement in kitten technology since then:
Kitten Churu
We can’t believe how much our guys love the adult version of these things. We’ve turned them into “get your claws clipped” rewards and they line up and mill around to get their claws clipped now.
The kitten ones are a hair expensive but, if you’ve only got the one kitty, it’s a treat that she will go *NUTS* over if our kitties are any indication.Report
Huh, I didn’t think to use that as a reward – might be too late for our 13-year-old. Currently he makes it extremely difficult to cut his claws because he extremely vigorously attacks the clippers as soon as he sees them.Report
We stumbled into it. The first few times we did their claws, we just gave them the little Friskies party mix treats and they were meh about it. We switched to Churu and IMMEDIATELY ordered the Costco-sized drum.
Seriously, they attack those things as if they hadn’t eaten for days.Report
My wife (who is awesome) is ahead of you. We already had them for our adult cats, and she immediately got some for the kitten. The best part about an underweight cat is we can give her treats without guilt, since she needs to cram in the calories.
We are at four cats now. I had planned to stop at three, but my sense of responsibility would not let me take this one to a shelter. As soon as I confirmed it was a kitten in the car, I told my wife “I guess we have four now.” She was thrilled.Report
Oh, awesome.
Four cats is kinda nuts, I agree, but the part of my life that I’d probably be happy to replay again and again and again and again is the part where we had Cecilia, Tiger, Angel, and Mister Baseball.Report
As of two years ago we had four, now we’re down to one – it’s been a rough couple years, though two of the three we lost had quite long lives.Report
Yeah. As awesome as it was to have four, it was significantly less awesome to have three, two, one, four, three.
But the new equilibrium is quite nice.Report
There’s a pretty good age gap between our first cat, who is nearly 9, and our second cat who is closer to 2. The oldest cat is also the one I am the most attached to, because she is the one that is the most attached to me. For whatever cat reason, she picked me over my wife early on. It will be rough when her final days come.Report
I had an MRI in, what, like February? After I injured my knee. I didn’t get offered music, just earplugs (“it can be loud”). The good news is I was put in feet first and only up to my waist. (I had had people warn me about claustrophobia, and yeah, I could see that being an issue)
it was mostly just really boring. Lie there watching the clock count down while you hold perfectly still. At one point my other leg started cramping up from the position I was in so I had to wait for the clock to count down before I could move it a little.
I got asked the “any implants, any piercings” and the answer was no. I did ask the tech about the glitter toenail polish I couldn’t fully remove (because I couldn’t bend my right leg comfortably to clean it all off) and she laughed and said that was fine, but “you’d be surprised at the people who come in with piercings and regret not telling us” and I thought “well, ears and nose, you could see them and tell them.” And then I thought more. And then I thought “OH NO” because I’ve heard that metal can heat up uncomfortably under the influence of the magnet, and, yeah.
I did wear an elastic sports bra so as not to have hooks to worry about. I could leave my underwear on but had to change into a gown for some reason (Maybe to make my leg more accessible for the cage to go around)
Anyway, the worst part was at the end when she looked at me and said “HOW did you do this again?” and when I told her, she said “it looks PAINFUL” and I worried for about a week that I had ruptured a ligament (I actually had a bone bruise, which you can’t do anything for but wait, and a slight meniscus tear, which I am choosing to just live with given that it’s not a problem as long as I keep up with the PT stretches)Report
If you enjoy wincing and/or cringing, you will enjoy this story.
Heck, just hover over the link and you won’t even have to read the clinical writing at Health Imaging dot com (“Insights in Imaging and Informatics”).
Ahem: It should also be noted that the FDA’s attempts to contact the patient in order to follow-up on her case have been unsuccessful.
For what it’s worth, I can easily imagine not wanting to call the FDA back.
I digress.
I can’t believe the tech talked about it with you! Unclinically!
“HOW did you do this again?”
“I beat up an unprofessional lab tech and this happened when I kneed her in the face.”Report
I was wondering, given I’m a woman, if she was fishing to see if abuse could have been a cause; I went in for a mammogram once with a bruise near my breast (I’m clumsy, I think I smacked into the exercise equipment I was using) and the tech was EXTREMELY concerned and asked me about how I got it and then also asked something about “did I have a partner” (I do not)
required reporting is good, except when it gets false positives, I guessReport
The reason they tell techs not to talk to patients unprofessionally is that sometimes the tech gets really quiet all of a sudden and you realize you’ve got something Professional.Report
The only time I had an MRI was when a routine hearing test indicated asymmetric loss. That put me in the 1-in-200 range for a tumor along the auditory nerve, so they scanned. No tumor.
As you get older, they have all sorts of other interesting scans that they can inflict on you. I have low bone density [1], so every three years I get a DEXA scan. Lay in assorted positions on the table while they position the precision x-ray source to get pictures of the neck of your femur and parts of your spine. Nuclear stress test for heart and coronary arteries [2]. No tunnel, the gamma-ray camera just steps its way along while you lay on the table. That one is fun because they give you a letter to show the TSA if you fly soon after. For about three days, you’re radioactive enough to trip the monitors at the airport. Assorted ultrasound scans [3]. Bit my tongue once to avoid saying something untoward about a very pretty young woman smearing me with lubricant.
I’m 70 now. I figure by this point I’ve accumulated a variety of health oddities. And been scanned enough ways to find them.
[1] Diagnosed in my mid-40s by a fluke. I gave them a large number of blood samples over the few months after that while they tried to find a reason why. Some of the testing was definitely in the “zebras, not horses” category, like odd cancers where there’s only a hundred cases a year globally.
[2] My BP and pulse weren’t recovering the way they should after exercise. In some cases those symptoms are due to you being about to fall over dead with some sort of cardiac problem. Nuke stress test said my heart and coronary arteries were “squeaky clean” (that’s a quote). Pumping volume was great (echocardiogram, another ultrasound). So, take a little white pill every 12 hours and the symptoms go away.
[3] Any ultrasound that gets my kidneys shows my pet kidney stone. Always in the same place, always the same size, never gives me any symptoms.Report
“For about three days, you’re radioactive enough to trip the monitors at the airport.”
I remember hearing about people being detained in the subways in the days following 9/11. They grabbed a bunch of nuclear medicine patients and… well, that let the cat out of the bag that they were able to tell from a distance.Report
High school football season starts Friday here in IL, and that means I’ll be starting my 33rd (and probably last) season as an official. The crew is hoping to get a championship assignment Thanksgiving weekend, so we have a lot riding on our performance. As always, the goal is to throw no flags all season (and, to stay with the theme, avoid an injury necessitating an MRI).
Other than that, I have jack squat planned. Have a great long weekend, all.Report
OH YEAH! IT’S A LONG WEEKEND!!!
It’ll be a good one, I’m sure.Report
Question that I’m embarrassed never to have thought of before: How do MRI headphones work? Headphones use magnets, right?
The answer, it turns out, is that they’re glorified cup-and-string telephones: The sound is generated outside of the MRI machine and conveyed to your ears via a long hollow tube.Report
OH! like the old-skool “disposable” airline headphones I remember from the 70s and 80sReport
OH YEAH!
You know, the music wasn’t particularly high quality, but I attributed that to the earplugs as well as the humming.Report
I found the MRI experience to be relaxing simply because it’s the least relaxing thing possible. There’s no single distraction; everything is a distraction.Report
I usually use it as an opportunity to take a quick nap.Report
It’s like being in a bad 1970’s sci fiction movie. Many loud, deeply dramatic hums and other sounds.
Occasionally I got a hot flash. I suspect there’s (supposed to be not) enough energy being thrown around to set you on fire just from the iron in your blood.Report
Heh, those are good off-the-cuff jokes for the technician. I tend to treat medical techs like the soup n*zi… yes or no with no extraneous observations lest I break some unknown convention.
My youngest turned 10 yesterday, so today we’re going to the Cubs/Nationals game. And, it just so happens that my folks are in town, so taking my dad as well. When I went to order the tickets a month ago, the seats we wanted would have left a singleton — and to my surprise the wouldn’t let me buy those seats. Seemed like a ‘them’ problem and not a ‘me’ problem… but them made it a me problem, so I bought the singleton so now my daughter and her fiance are coming too.
My dad has been a Cubs fan since the 50s, I since the 70s, Son #1 since the 00s and the birthday boy since the 20s. That’s a lot of baseball suffering right there.Report
I’ve been in the MRI tube twice: Once to look at a knee I screwed up by being a stupid airman (diagnosis: broken knee cap, bone bruising, and some soft tissue damage but no tears), and another time because I screwed up a shoulder (diagnosis: SLAP tear which luckily responded to PT). I, too, found the humming and banging and poor-quality music more relaxing than anything else. I think I even fell asleep during the scan on my shoulder.Report