MRI Scan at Docklands Healthcare

So had to face the music today and go and visit "Docklands Healthcare" (it's very handily only five minutes from where I work, you gotta love Canary Wharf!) to have my very naughty knee scanned in their lovely new "Siemens 1.5 Tesla", managed to forget that there is an east entrance from the Jubilee line, so took a very pleasant (and rather suprising) walk through Jubliee Park -

- where I was slightly delayed, as it seems all sorts of detached frog eye installations have been arranged in various amusing places (did a double take when I spotted the first pair peering out from inside a bush) -

- most of them also appear to be illuminated, so I imagine the very best effect is to be seen during the hours of darkness (when it would seem that giant slimy creatures were lurking in the shadows all around the place)...very amusing stuff! Will have to go back one evening with a tripod... ;)

Anyway, a very short walk later I found myself at the entrance to Docklands Healthcare, had to fill out a couple of forms (nothing too stressful) you just have to confirm in no uncertain terms that no-where on (or in) your body is anything remotely foreign and metallic (as the huge magnet would have absolutely no difficulty in ripping any such object straight out of your body, so remove any piercings before going, eh?)...

The MRI Scanner itself resembles an old IBM mainframe with a *HUGE* tube of Polo mints stuck on the side, you place yourself on a remotely operated table (after stripping down to a surgical gown in a little changing room), and the appropriate area of your body is then wedged in place (to stop it moving) by plenty of chunks of tempurfoam...some headphones are placed on your head (big, old fashioned cans, but fed sound through thick hollow plastic tubes (no metal remember), so everything sounds rather muted and distant)...you are then asked if you are comfortable, offered your choice from a list of music (they had all sorts from Classical, through NOW Albums all the way to a selection of classic Arabic hits)...I chose a bit of classic Coldplay...sat back as the slightly underwater sounding warbling began and was then told by the (nice antipodean or possibly South African) radiologist to "Stay as still you can, relax or we will have to repeat each scan"...and then the racket began, I tensed up *immediately*, just couldn't help it - it sounds like someone is attacking the tube with a hammer (very quickly) - in the end I was stuck in that increasingly uncomfortable position for over an hour - "Ok, there was a bit of movement there, did you feel it?", (nodding, Yes, I'm sorry), "Okay, we'll have to go again, just another 4 mintues, try to relax and *don't* move"...*Groan*...

Suffice it to say, doing this is very, *very* difficult and doesn't get any easier as time marches on...

Anyway, it's all over now, I walked away with 2 CDs full of interesting shots like this one -

- that show slices of me as if I had been shredded on a giant mandoline...quite amazing!

Next step my consultant, as all that the pictures (although I glanced only briefly) seem to do for me is make me think of Sunday Roast...(which I am fully aware is, at the very *least*, a *little* strange, and potentially a very, *very* wrong reaction indeed)... ;) Just glad they weren't in colour...

Don't worry though, I'm not hungry...right now... ;)