I’m in the middle of a wonderful foray in the beast known as the American medical system for a knee injury* and this week was lucky enough to have an MRI.
You see this room-sized piece of equipment on hospital dramas all the time. It looks like an oversized doughnut with a tongue – the lucky patient lies down on the tongue and gets popped into the doughnut hole for an hour-long examination, where strange radiation bombards your body and the end result is a nifty picture.
But in another sign that nothing you see on TV is real, you also see people inside the imaging chamber holding discussions with people outside the machine. Nothing could be further from the truth! That machine is LOUD. It’s like going to a rave, without the fancy lights and people tripping out on ecstasy.
What really happens is a technician in another room says “This next run will be 3 minutes,” and the machine goes THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUD with near bone-jarring intensity. 45 minutes later you get to reinsert all your body piercings and go home.
[sub]*I’m not going to tell you how I injured it. Let’s just say I was lazy.[/sub]
I helped out in an MRI unit for a while. Yes indeed, they are loud. I also volunteered to act as patient while they tested new software. It was a C-spine program, so the knock knock was right in my ears.
The noise didn’t bother me much, but I had a slap head moment that scared me. As the table transited into the body of the machine, I was startled to suddenly see some one looking at me! :smack: It was ME I didn’t expect a mirror.
BTW, it’s not exactly radiation. It’s a super magnet. The image is from the hydrogen being realigned. Different tissues have different configurations of hydrogen ions, the machine realigns them to all orient the same direction. The computer then interprets the pattern for that tissue.
I had an MRI last night. 2nd time in 2 weeks (I have a Mystery Foot Lump. I call him Mr. Steinbrenner). They are damn loud, and the vibration does not really help with the whole “not having to go to the bathroom” thing. I don’t really mind the noise, but the headphones were playing some godawful lite rock crap. For New England dopers who may need MRIs, I recommend North Shore Magnetic over MGH Waltham. NSMRI has XM radio. Much nicer.
The lovely Mrs. Cliffy had to have one not too long ago. She also reported that it’s really loud and, with the thumping, awfully creepy. I hope I never have to get one – I’m a little claustrophobic, and I know that trapped in that thing with the ca-chunking going on that I’d seriously lose my shit.
Chalk me up as another who fell asleep during my head & neck MRI a couple of years ago (I was pretty ill at the time, so not at my most energetic).
I’m not claustrophobic, so that wasn’t a problem, & the thumping and assorted other sounds got to be kind of hypnotic after a while. The most bothersome part was the technician interrupting my nap every time she warned me what was coming next.
And I was wearing noise-blocking headphones. Still damn loud.
I get the results tomorrow. I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll only need physio, not surgery.
I had a brain scan a few years ago with the wonderful bonus head locked in the cage device. When the tech first slid me in I was panic stricken and asked to come straight out. He told me I could come back in a week and have a sedative but since they were looking for a brain tumor I thought I hadbetter suck it up and get it done.
At the second attempt I was able to shut my eyes and pay attention only to the breeze across my face and the noises. The machinery sounded like part of some grand industrial opus - I am sure a smart musician could turn them to good use. In the end I was quite fascinated by it.
For those of you who hate driving in Boston, I have to recommend Central Massachusetts Magnetic Imaging Center. I had mine there last year. They didn’t give me headphones or ear plugs but the music was loud enough to drown out most of the knocking. They gave me a music list beforehand - kind of like what you’d get at Karaoke. I picked out Barry Manilow. That had a huge selection of all different genre’s. The people there were extremely nice and made the ordeal much more comfortable for claustrophobic me.
Even so though, I hope I never have to have another one. I did not at all like the little tube. Ugh, makes me sweat just thinking about it. But, they also had this cool wedge shaped pillow which they put under my knees. For the first time in over 4 months, my back and legs didn’t hurt when I used that thing. It was nice of them to do everything possible to make me more comfortable.
Helpful MRI tip: Ask for a blanket. Even if it doesn’t seem cold in the room, after 45 minutes of not moving at all, your feet will be freezing. And do not drink anything AT ALL for at least an hour beforehand. You WILL have to pee by the time it’s over. And all the music in the world can not distract you from that fact when you’re immobile in a little tube.
I had a head MRI in December. It was quite loud even with the earplugs they gave me. The open MRIs are much quieter, but apparently take much longer to get the required image. I agree with Elko that the noise was quite hypnotic. OTOH, I am not claustrophobic. And I wish I had music to listen to. But I had the extra bracing around my head to keep it steady, so headphones were out.
Many years ago, I did a bunch of work for a nuerobiologist who was doing pain research, and typically I was the first guinea pig for any test that we came up with. One of the things we were trying to figure out was if we could detect brain activation due to pain on the MRI equipment of the time.
So here was the test setup. I’m strapped to the MRI bed so that my head cannot move. The trick here is to take a series of MRI scans with my head in exactly the same position so that a computer can corrolate the data, and we’re looking for changes in blood flow on the order of about half of a percent. We’re going to do scan after scan after scan with me strapped down so that I cannot move while someone inflicts pain upon me. Doesn’t that sound like fun?
We had two different types of pain that we were testing, and the trick was to make devices that could inflict a controlled amount of pain on someone without interfering with the MRI machine. This means all of the fancy electronically controlled torture devices I had come up with previously wouldn’t work, because they would interfere with the MRI and the MRI would interfere with them. I came up with a “heat” test, which was a device made out of brass (brass, unlike most metals, doesn’t muck up an MRI machine) with water inside of it so that it had enough thermal mass that it would hold its temperature. The device was left soaking in a hot water bath at a temperature that was above the human pain threshold, but not so hot as to actually cause skin damage. The other device was a spring loaded “poker” with a needle like tip on the end of it.
So, into the MRI machine I go. This is one of the more closed in older type machines, and I was literally strapped in so that my head couldn’t move, so good thing I’m not claustrophobic. We do a few baseline scans, and the machine goes wackawackawackawacka. Wow. I didn’t know it was that loud. Ok, time for the tests. I very quickly realize that we have the temperature of the brass device too hot, but I don’t want to screw up the test, so I’m just trying desperately not to move while this thing is really freakin hurting. I have to undergo a couple of minutes of torture with that machine going wackawackawacka until finally the test is over and I can finally move and say “THAT’S TOO FREAKIN HOT!!!”
After we were done, I walked back to the control room to see how the brain scans turned out. The smart assed researcher I worked for looked at the screen and said “good news, we found a brain.”
I don’t know if they were able to figure out anything from the brain scans after all of the data was crunched. I did get to keep a nice scan of my brain as a souvenir.
I find the noise hypnotic as well. Plus, you can play a little game with yourself trying to predict the type of noise that the next run will be.
Will it be:
kpock kpock kpock <pause> kpock kpock kpock <pause> BRACK BRACK BRACK BRACK BRACK BRACK…
BRUNNGK BRUNNGK BRUNNGK BRUNNGK BRUNNGK…
or
pikka pikka pokka pokka pikka pikka pokka pokka interwoven with BRONK BRONK BRONK BRONK? This is the one that got really hypnotic as the different rhythms danced and parried and syncopated. Just close your eyes and drift…
For my last MRI, I planned ahead and brought my own #29 earplugs. (29 dB reduction in sound level) Those machines are still really loud.
Got my results: a sub chrondal (sp?) fracture to the cartilage and bone. Really just a hairline crack that doesn’t extend completely through my cartilage, which my doctor assures me is a good thing. I’ll be going to physio 2-3 times a week, and if I’m still in pain next month I’ll have another MRI to see if my cartilage is flaking off.
