Tuesday, August 12, 2014

On not having shards of metal dragged out through my eyeballs by a huge magnet

WARNING: This machinery has the ability to drag shards of metal out through your eyeballs with its ridiculously large magnet. Cool!
To Frimley Park Hospital for an MRI scan on my gammy foot, made somewhat nervous at the number of times I was warned in the official documentation about having shards of metal dragged out through your eyeballs by a huge magnet.

In truth, having shards of metal dragged out through your eyeballs by a huge magnet is an undesirable outcome in any surgical procedure, and if there's one process where it's bound to happen sooner or later, it's lying down inside a huge doughnut that contains a huge magnet.

To be frank, I had no desire to have shards of metal dragged out through my eyeballs by a huge magnet, and I told them so, on the spot. Luckily, I was assured that this hardly ever happens, as it tends to spoil their day, not to mention that of the poor sap having shards of metal dragged out through their eyeballs by a huge magnet.

So, confident that I wasn't etc etc, I lay myself down on the gurney and let the MRI scan technician strap my foot into position. Then he handed me two things: A pair of headphones ("To drown out the noise of the scanner") and a panic button ("Just in case something terrible happens, like ...err... shards of metal ...err... nothing").

I put on the headphones, and to my utmost horror, I found that it was piping the local commercial radio station ("A better mix of music") directly into my brain, and the opening bars of Richard Marx and Right Here Waiting, one of the most insipid middle of the road radio hits of this modern age, rightfully classed as a crime against humanity. Hardly what I'd call "a better mix of music". I hit the panic button immediately.

They say that one MRI victim in ten thousand develops super powers. Confident that that one person is me, I took myself home, and waited for invisibility, flight or super strength to manifest itself.

Alas, my super power appears to be an ability to peel open hard boiled eggs all in one go. Rubbish for saving the world, but S.H.I.E.L.D. want me for their staff canteen.

Huzzah for the NHS!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

How do the earphones work inside such a large magnetic field?

TRT said...

They are usually simple air pipes.

Anonymous said...

by coincidence i was also having my foot scanned in an MRI machine yesterday but because my evilmegacorpprivatemedicalinsurance was paying i got to choose what music would be drowned out by the noise of the machine.

no obvious super powers yet but also no shards/eyeball issues either so, on balance, a good result

Steve_Barker said...

I love the noises MRISs make! So much so I've bought this album ....

http://shop.kvitnu.com/pan-sonic/104-pan-sonic-oksastus-cd.html

I have to wait another month for my next MRI.