A good way to lose, well, you'll get the point... or not, hopefully.
Apologies for length, always looks bigger in retrospect:

On Saturday, went for an MRI scan accompanied by Friend. Hung around in the waiting room for a while, wondering why "Shooting Monthly" appeared to be the only magazine available to pass the time.

A nurse approached and escorted me outside, leaving Friend in the waiting room ("he'll be half an hour-ish") through the car park, to a large trailer, and up some rickety metal steps into a small room filled with two nurses, two computers, and myself.

"Pop through that door please, take off your trousers, and put the gown on so that it opens at the back, then lie down on the bench".

"OK..."

I'm greeted by a large cylinder, some six feet long, just big enough to get a corpse, erm I mean a body, inside.

I get undressed and lie on the bench. Then I get up, put the gown on, and then lie back down again...

The nurse knocks on the door, and enters, fiddles with a few knobs and causes the bench to rise.

She then ties my ankles together and gives me a squeezy rubber panic button to use in the event of "an emergency", and places a weighty padded matting over the area to be scanned.

(An emergency? What emergency? And what's that mat doing over my groin?)

"Put these headphones on please. It deadens the noise. I can play some music if you want?"

(Noise? What noise?)

"Yes, please. Thanks".

Nurse leaves the room and the bench rises further and begins to slide into the middle of the cylinder, so my head is protruding out the other side.

Then the opera music begins...

"Is that OK, sir?", she says through an intercom system built into the headphones.

"Yes", I say politely, "that's fine".

"Right, we're going to do six scans. Each takes around two minutes".

Thirty seconds later the noise starts, kind of like having a cross between a pneumatic drill and a machine gun go off next to your ears... all the while being faintly masked by indistinguishable opera music.

Which then begins to skip and gets stuck, playing the same section of music every five seconds or so.

They don't notice. Is this what they mean by an emergency? I think not... best lie back and think of England.

Being a man, thoughts eventually drift around to sex (after about three minutes) which has an undesirable side effect best left to the imagination - or best left OUT of the imagination...

Thinks: "Oh hell, will this affect the scan?! What if it moves the matting..." (as if...)

In situations like this, lying in a large electromagnet listening to a stuck opera CD and being assaulted by sounds of pneumatic drills and machine guns, whilst attempting to lift a heavy object using the power of the force, I always wish I'd listened to what my Father said...

And that's it of course, the magic thought at any age. Thank God for parents...

And then the sounds stop as the bench moves outside the cylinder again; the juddering opera is interrupted by a voice: "That's it now Sir, all over".

The nurse comes in, removes the immovable, unties my ankles, leaves the room, I get dressed, and am escorted back to the waiting room, hoping Friend hasn't had any ideas from reading the "Shooting Monthly" that she looks up from when I enter.

"How did it go?" she asks.

"Oh, fine..."
(Mucky has squinted at the screen with one eye shut since, Tue 16 Dec 2008, 19:59, 4 replies, latest was 17 years ago)

get over it
when you reach my levels of insanity, you'll need them twice a year.





Still no conclusive results..
(knackerz is skinning up, Wed 17 Dec 2008, 13:28, Reply)

Really?
You need erections twice a year? That's really unfortunate... whether you're male, or female...
(Mucky has squinted at the screen with one eye shut since, Wed 17 Dec 2008, 18:16, Reply)

I had an MRI last Sunday
Most unpleasant.
I already have a plate and 5 bolts in my neck so the scan was done at low power but for longer. I had the side effect of induced currents sending electrical pain signals directly down the nerve paths to my arms. Luckily that distracted me from the monumental hangover I was nursing after our works xmas bash which featured the two deadliest words in the English language, "FREE BAR".

I was not a well boy that day.
(Captain Placid 24/7 ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn, Wed 17 Dec 2008, 23:55, Reply)

Free Bars are bad...
Yep, agree with that. Ours is this Friday, but no free bar this year thankfully; previous years have seen outstanding hangovers and, at 44, I don't think I can take it any more!
(Mucky has squinted at the screen with one eye shut since, Thu 18 Dec 2008, 13:13, Reply)