What to expect from an MRI
There are some things that work well as a surprise. Gifts, for example, and birthday parties – though this is not without risk. I’d worry someone might throw me a party and I’d be wearing track pants while everyone else is looking fancy.
Still, surprises can be a delight – indeed, some moments are best when they arrive unannounced. I love it when you come round a bend in Central Otago, for instance, and a majestic vista reveals itself. If someone showed you a photo just as you were about to make the turn, it would dull some of the shine.
Also, knowing too much before you go in can put you off. One of the great advantages of youth is that you don’t know yet that some things are impossible, and so they become possible.
I’ve toured shows and written books that, looking back, I may not have embarked on if I’d known how hard they were going to be. See also “camping”. You don’t regret a hike or a tramp in retrospect, but if you’d known exactly how steep the mountain was or how hungry the mozzies, you may have either exhausted yourself with anxiety beforehand, or pulled out of the thing altogether.
I feel this about childbirth – it’s good to know the generalities in advance, but you wouldn’t want to get too explicit or no one will ever get pregnant. A vague “It can be quite messy and shall we say painful? And that’s all perfectly normal” is enough to be going on with.
But for other things, forewarned is forearmed. Which is why I’m going to tell you about the MRI I had before Christmas.
First thing to note – I am fine! I have a lot wrong with one ear and the latest chapter in this long story needed some really good pictures to illustrate it.
And I thought I knew what I was in for. I’ve had plenty of CT scans and I imagined – based largely on television medical dramas – that an MRI would just be a bigger, more dramatic, full-body version of one of those.
So I was not at all prepared for the noise. Apparently if another part of your body is being imaged, you might be given earplugs or headphones to block out the sounds, but because the star of this photoshoot was my ear, my head was kept still in box-framing which left no room for such luxuries.
It was like being at a techno funk rave – I was swept back to Edinburgh in the early 2000s, sweaty dancefloor, intense Germanic rhythms laid down by a terrifying DJ offering an experience somewhere between euphoria and pain but closer to the latter. “Oonz oonz oonz” but not as melodic.
If you’re unfamiliar with a techno funk rave, imagine instead an annoying little brother lying beside you repetitively making a sound like a truck and, just when you surrender to that rhythm, he switches to a concrete mixer, then a chainsaw, then a police siren. So that, but less relaxing. For about half an hour.
Did I mention there are vibrations, too? Like there’s another kid doing the equivalent of kicking the back of your seat on a long haul flight.
I used all my meditative breathing skills to stay calm. Later, the technician said she was impressed, which was gratifying. I asked how people who don’t meditate manage to get through it. Oh, she said, we give them drugs.
See? These are the things we need to know in advance.