If you have had an MRI before, you know about the rather long questionnaire you complete before the procedure. There are several questions about metal inside your body; clips, pacemakers, artificial joints, and possible foreign bodies embedded in eyes. I took those inqueries to mean an MRI was not a possibility if you had any of those complications.
I wasn't sorry to think I would not be enduring again that long period of holding still in a tunnel that sounded like jack hammers were beating on the exterior. I cannot understand why they offer music on the headphones...all one can hear is something akin to the base beat coming from the pulsing car in the lane next to you driven by a rockin' teen boy. I do, I'm ashamed to admit, take some small comfort in thinking the driver will most certainly be deaf by age forty.
Anyway, confident I already knew the answer, I asked Dr. Kai about MRIs at my last visit. To my amazement he said there usually was not a problem, just be sure to disclose all to the technician. In passing he added, " if the prosthetic parts in your arm start to feel hot, tell them to stop the procedure."
What? Hot! And "tell them to stop?" They are not even in the room! A few years ago I had several "medical incidents" in which I was alone with a machine and the technicians were communicating with me from an adjacent room. I could very well hear them as they talked to me and gave instructions. They always said they could hear me if I needed help. Well, the day came when I felt an urgent need to tell them the machine was not acting in its usual manner. I timidly said "hello?" No answer. I raised my voice, " HELLO?" "Something's not working right," I yelled. No one answered. By then the equipment droned to a halt, in its usual manner, and the tech came back in the little room. No one had heard me. And this equipment merely droned, there were no jack hammers loud enough to drown out a marching band!
Somehow medical science got along fine before magnetic resonance imaging. I am thinking, in the future, magnetic resonance imaging may have to get along without me!
Archive timeline: 2014: May and June - preparing for surgery, July - surgery and post op problems, August - recovery and physical therapy, September..
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