Clareified

Pearatty definitely had me freaked out about it.
I tossed and turned all night dreading it. So, I can’t say I was surprised that I overslept and had to take a cab into Manhattan to make sure I made it on time for the MRI.
The test lab was way in the basement.
I checked in with a cheery secretary and she escorted me to the elevator bank.
“Just give these to the technician,’ she said handing me a clipboard.
The technician was a black woman. Who smiled at me and told me to take a seat. She then handed me a seven page intake form and a pen.
I’ve become adept these past few months with completing medical forms, but this one -complete with its 19 different ways of asking if you could be pregnant– was the most humorous of all. Have you ever been diagnosed with excess iron in the blood? No.
Please identify all tatoos. Um.
Has your eye been exposed to metal shavings? No.
Do you work in a mine?
I gave her back the form, she asked a few more questions verbally.
No, for the 20th time and showed me to the waiting room.
I was surrounded by signs ordering the removal of all earrings, watches, cellphone, credit cards, metrocards.
Since my mother had gotten me earrings with screw on backs — not her first rodeo–I figured I should get started removing them from my ears.
Dude, I can’t tell you how many times that “righty tighty/lefty loosie” rhyme has saved me.
I put everything away and waited.
Finally, after about 30 minutes, a different technician leads me to the machine itself. She runs through a few more questions…leading me to wonder what on earth they think goes on in the waiting room. She gives me a key and tells me to put my belongings in there.
“So, what do you do?” she asks.
“I’m a lawyer.”
“No way. For real?”
“Uh…yeah.”
“You don’t look old enough to be a lawyer.”
I smile. She tells me to lie flat on the machine and gives me headphones because “the machine gets loud.”
I lie down on the pillow.
“Ok, whatever you do…please…don’t move.”
I instinctively want to move. Squirm. Readjust. Scratch. Something. It’s driving me crazy.
I close my eyes.
The machien starts whirring and I feel myself drifting off to sleep.
When she comes back in — evidently 20 minutes have passed because she says the test is half over. She then gives me a shot of something in my wrist.
I immediately flashback to the seven pages of forms and remember signing something which said I understood the risks associated with this injection.
I signed it, assuming someone would explain the risks later.
I was wrong.
And now this liquid was flowing through my uninformed veins, but the lab was fully covered by my uninformed signature.
Damn it.
Maybe I’m not old enough to be a lawyer.
Thankfully I drifted back to sleep.
When it was all over, I decided that pearatty was crazy.
The MRI machine is great.
It’s like a huge magnetic sleep chamber.
In fact, I’m going to get one for my house. I’ll be insured a goodnight’s sleep AND when someone tries to assassinate me with a knife or a gun, the magnetic field will disarm them.

This entry was posted by Dawn Summers on Wednesday, July 11th, 2007 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.