Friday - April 18, 2008

 MRI

 thanks to Thurston Moore, I was prepared for this...

Sometime last fall DH took me to see Bright Eyes at Radio City Music Hall.  Though I'd passed by many times (reading the marquee on the street and wondering in my little girl from Ohio head what it was like on the inside) this was my first time to actually see a show there.  

Bright Eyes was phenomenal.  Really.  Worth waiting through two opening acts.  The second opening act we enjoyed tremendously, a blues band called the Felice Brothers.  But the opening act, Thurston Moore (previously of Sonic Youth) um, another story.  After a couple halfway decent songs he just went off on nothing but waves of feedback for an eternity of earbending torture.

Which is basically what an MRI is like, as I discovered today.  And I had earplugs.

The only other MRI I ever had was on my knee, so only part of me was submerged in the space capsule. My head rested comfortably on a pillow, wrapped with a special headset piping in classic rock almost as loud as I like it.  And I thought it was conveniently very loud because I like it like that, not to mask that little humming of the MRI.

Not this time around. I got an IV poked in my arm and some little foam earplugs.  I lied belly down, arms stretched overhead like superman in flight, and dove in feet first, all the way.   A few warning blasts and WAHWAHWAHWAHWAHWA-A-A-A...

I had no idea how loud those suckers can be!  Various pulsings for various lengths of time, stopping to change my IV for "contrast" shots.   After about 10 minutes hundreds of butterflies began beating their wings all around my head and even though I knew it was just a fan (or was it magnetic pulses gone haywire?  Arrgghh!)  I desperately wanted to swat them away, but of course not only can you not move a single muscle, they told me to try not to breathe too deeply!

Well, aside from temporary red marks on my face from the not-so-soft head rest, I made it through intact.  And I'm guessing that after a half hour of MRI's, the second set of  mammograms and the second set of sonograms (I had a busy day), there are probably enough pictures of my breasts to fill book!  Reserve your copy now!