today i underwent a somewhat strange medical procedure. Strange in a sense that it’s wasnt’ what i had expected it to be; more like a five to ten minutes scan sort of thing like an X-Ray, infact, it was more like as you are going in for a surgery. During the normal course of procedure, a patient is injected with a dye at a place which is to be scanned. The iodide based die sort of contrasts from the ligaments and tissues, and pinpoints where the bleeding may be occuring, or where the damage is done. But, for me, they decided to skip the dye part, since i had couple of instances of shell-fish allergy in the past. Usually, iodide is the main trigger of shell-fish based allergies..<— you learn new thing everday..
Magnetic Resonance Imaging is scaning of ligaments and tissues, unlike xray or CT which can only examine bones. I needed the test for my shoulder after i suffered a sports related injury, and the doctors just wanted to examine if the ligaments and tissues in my left shoulder joint are healing as expected, and that there’re no long term lingering damage. The procedure was meant to be almost all precautionary in nature as opposed to being a diagnostic one.
Before you go in the imaging room, you need to take everything out which maybe metallic in nature - due to the presence of high megnatic field emmitted by the MRI scanner- and just keep the minimum required clothes on, jeans n t-shirt in my case.
For teh scan, they put me on a bed flat on my back with the left arm placed in a position where it can’t be moved. Since, the scan is very very sensitive to any kind of motions, you are asked to breathe as shallow as possible…and then they place head phones with music so the loud noise from teh scanner is suppressed.. a bit uncomfortable part comes when you are inserted(head first) into the tunnel of the scanner..eventhough, i am not claustrophobic, i still felt the effects of it, since the top is only less than five inches from the tip of your nose..and you know that you are going to be in for close to 40 minutes..so i just closed my eyes..and listened to the music..while they ran scans..but the procedure itself is not painful at all…just awfully long..or so it feels.
and the doctors just wanted to examine if the ligaments and tissues in
my left shoulder joint are healing as expected, and that there're no
long term lingering damage.
wow. they gave you an MRI for shoulder injury outlaw? thats cool. in Pakistan they give MRI's only in extreme cases coz its so expensive here. glad to know it went well and hope you get fully recovered soon!
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*Originally posted by outlaw: *
a bit uncomfortable part comes when you are inserted(head first) into the tunnel of the scanner..
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Wasn't it suffocating??It always horrifies me to see patients going inside that tunnel,one of my friend's mother who went for an MRI felt like she was being buried inside the grave!!
outy, whats the prognosis on the tissue damage then? You should have taken your own music man. You would have appreciated Blues even more under the claustrophobic conditions :D
^sadzz so is it like a tunnel they put you through, and close on both ends? I don’t blame her, it would suffocate me, I would beat the door down if I was in there…for 40 minutes!!! Heck I’d be out in 3:eek:
yeah its apparently really tight and if ur the kind of person who likes their space, it can get rather crazy in there… ive not been in there, but just thinking bout it freaks me out… i cant even wear turtle necks for the same reason
