This was edited April 2014 from its original first published as part of my March/May 2006 letter.
Nothing in my life is ever simple. I began this fight with “the man” over these useless computer monitors we have that don’t allow us to use the software properly. Long story short, about two months ago I started getting headaches when using these old CRT monitors I had. I didn’t think much of it at the time since it had never happened before and with all the crap I’ve been through over the past four years I figured it was simply another odd symptom in my ongoing “perfectly healthy sick guy” routine. After a few weeks of worsening symptoms I talked to the company ergonomicist (sp?) who does his cute little routine and he changes the frequency on the monitors. This helps a bit but doesn’t solve the problem. So I went to the eye doctor and my family doctor and both figure that nothing serious is wrong. My family doctor does, however, get me scheduled up for an MRI on my head just to be sure there is nothing in my noggin causing the headaches. That’s right! I finally got me a brain scan!!! Probably a family first (surprisingly) and something many of you no doubt think was long, long, LONG overdue!
I don’t know if any of you have had an MRI before, but I can tell you it is way fricken’ cool! I had to lie down on this long bench and had a plastic halo-like device placed over my face and around my head. I got to wear headphones to protect my ears from the noise and my head was then clamped into place so that it couldn’t’ move! The table then moved me into the donut hole of the MRI machine and the fun began. Talk about weird and wacky noises. For a multi-million dollar piece of high-tech, sensitive medical equipment it sounded remarkably like some futuristic mechanical pinball machine! There were all sorts of repetitive banging and pulsing noises followed by short pauses. And each successive set of noises during the 15 minute test was different and cooler than the previous set. Cripes, by the end of the test the table was even shaking and vibrating as the machine groaned and growled. Totally awesome! If I’m ever a billionaire, I’m buying myself one of these puppies just to play with! As for the results, I don’t know them yet. Undoubtedly experts across the globe are currently bewildered by what my brain scan has revealed. I’ll probably be in some rather prestigious medical journals in the not too distant future!
Picture By Mri magnet (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Leave a Reply