My magnetic personality

Last Thursday, seated in the 'ante-room' to the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital MRI scanner, the radiographer was going through the usual checklist of questions designed to ensure that a part of me didn't become overly-attracted to the super-powerful magnet I was about to enter. I established with her that the shrapnel the military medics had been unable to remove in my left leg would be well outside the neck and chest (cervicothoracic) region under investigation. She made a monotone response to indicate she had heard this one many times before but this only served to strengthen my resolve to come up with an original line and make her, or a colleague, chuckle in appreciation.

Next, I thought it best to establish that this new ROH scanner (one of many that I've visited in the West Midlands!) was as I remembered, 'doughnut-shaped' -and reassuringly open on both sides. Her brow furrowed and she told me that though it was more capacious than the one in which I'd had my claustrophobic experience (see Thursday 16th June 2011 post) it was still of the 'tunnel' variety and that I would need to be taken fully into the scanner. This instantaneously squashed all ambition to amuse her. I could already sense a warm fluid rising through my trunk and limbs and the automatic intake of deeper breaths.

We agreed that I'd have a go.

Inside the tunnel I was focused on only one thing, the small mirror locked into place above my head and set at a  forty-five degree angle so that I could see into the airy, life-enhancing and spacious room I had so recently entered. I had been assured that the procedure would take only fifteen-twenty minutes. I wasn't told, however, that, once inside the tunnel, you enter a 4th dimensional time-warp. This was the longest twenty minutes of my short life. Only the blurred sense of people in hospital uniforms pursuing their normal lives beyond the viewing window and my enhanced yogic breathing kept me from the hazardous cliff edge of panic. The headphones gurgled some baroque music, intermittently obliterated by the thunderous roar of the scanner that gave every impression of trying and failing, to reach a speed that would enable it to take off.

But, I hear you ask; 'How did you get to be in yet another scanner? Surely every part of your body is already, intimately known to modern science?'

Well, let me take you back to the last post - the one you, unkindly, thought would never end . If you recall I had mentioned then that my next appointment, in late January,  was to be with the consultant at the ROH. I expressed the opinion then that I was so fed up with the neurological and mechanical discomfort in my back and leg that I was prepared to request a surgical procedure on my poor scoliotic spinal column.

The surgeon had other ideas.

I imagine that medics are taught that there are at least three sources of information that might help them diagnose a patient's condition; physical examination, technology-based testing (such as blood and urine samples, all manner of scans and 'oscopys') and finally, 'verbal feedback'. However, asking me questions about my back pain is something in which my consultant isn't particularly interested. He is a 'scan man'. He has looked at them before I enter his office and so knows what outcome he wants - and assisted by a personable, authoritative style he usually gets it.

Having established that the epidural (see 23rd November 2011) had been unsuccessful he proceeded to dissuade me from asking for major surgery by showing me the MRI scan of another patient whose spine was liberally studded with ghostly pins. The man's back had been unable to take the strain of linking these pinned vertebrae to the first 'good' vertebra in the lumbar region causing one of them to fracture. The man was now bent double when he walked.

'And your point is?' I wanted to ask.

Not that I was looking for major surgery but I did have a small speech prepared much of which had already been rendered pointless by his conclusion that there was nothing more he could do for me. He did offer to refer me to the pain clinic at the QEH and I hope for an early appointment but he otherwise intended to discharge me from his list.

Then I remembered part of the 'speech'. I wanted him to know that I had also experienced a change in the way I used my left arm (and not only my leg). I relayed some of the symptoms which threw him into some consternation as he had already intoned summary and final letters into his dictaphone.

'Have we scanned your upper back?'

We established that 'we' hadn't. So that's how I came to be in the MRI room, renewing my relationship with the guardians of the scanner. There is obviously a powerful attraction there.