Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

A Look Inside My Head
Today was the day for my long-scheduled MRI exam. This was set up a few months back in order to confirm the auditory specialist's diagnosis of nerve damage to the auditory nerve on my left side.

I'll admit to being a bit nervous about the results, as there was an outside chance that the real issue was a tumour, but as the specialist said: "if it's cancer, you'll likely be dead before your MRI appointment". I don't think he thought it was likely to be a tumour.

My appointment at East General was at 3:45pm, which must've effectively been the end of the day, as I waited until everyone else in the radiology/MRI waiting room cleared out ahead of me. I came prepared, and ended up most of the graphic novel (diary?) Pyongyang, by Guy Deslisle, which is about a French-Canadian animator's sojourn in the capitol of North Korea prior to 9/11.

When I finally got to that stage, there was a brief interview with the technician who asked me again the various questions I had already answered on a form while I was in the waiting room. For all the concern amount working with metal/metal implants/dentures/tattoos (am clear on all these counts) I was surprised about the lack of concerns over teeth fillings, which I have aplenty. I asked, and apparently it is not a concern, though apparently it can through of the imaging results a bit. I then took off my watch, glasses, and wallet then put them in a locker along with my backpack. I was then weighed and led to the device.

I was asked to put in some ear plugs and then given a hairnet to wear. An enormous General Electric logo was incised at the top of the very large toroid I was about to be placed within. The technician, a kindly, middle-aged east Indian clearly at the end of his shift, ushered me onto the platform, and handed me a shutter release ball in case I got claustrophobic and needed out. When I was lying down he then flipped a little mirror immediately above my eyes so that I could see what he was doing in the adjacent room if I wanted to. I was then told to keep as still as possible, and a smooth electric motor glided me into the device -- which was a snug fit since I am so broad-shouldered.

Being in an MRI is mainly a sonic experience. There was a constant cyclical pump sound in the background, and then several series of crunching electronic tones. Kraftwerk would have been proud. At the conclusion of each session the voice of the technician would be piped through, smoothly reassuring me and letting me know when the next test was to begin. I lay back and relaxed, trying not to follow the sound with my eyes as the giant magnet around me flipped the polarity of all of the hydrogen atoms in my head and read the radio waves that pinged from them as they re-aligned.

The whole testing procedure was maybe 20 minutes or so. I was then ushered out of the machine and picked up the key to my locker.

I asked if I could see the results, and the technician kindly obliged. I didn't have my glasses and the images only took up maybe a quarter of the computer screen, but I was shown a vertical cross-section of my head, my white matter appearing like twin stalks of cauliflower. The technician found the slice that depicted my auditory nerve best, which appeared as a snaking thick white line on either side of my head. No mysterious white golf ball indicating a tumour that I could see (whew!), but without my glasses I couldn't make out much fine detail either. I thanked the fellow and then made my way out of the hospital.

It was close to 6pm when I got home, just in time for a Chinese take out meal from The Goof, and just prior to taking Erika out to see new The Pirates of the Caribbean movie that opened today.

I need to make an appointment sometime in the next week to be advised of the results of the scan.