Ask and it shall be given you

J's been in pretty much constant pain lately. So far as the doctors know, it's not caused by the cancer, but rather by some combination of muscle and nerve interaction that results in bouts of sciatica or muscle pain or both. This is all very motion inhibiting.

How can they be so sure? Three letters:- MRI. Magnetic resonance imaging. If you ever want to know more about your insides than you want to know, be sure to get one of these examinations. Then sit down and poke through the collection of amazing images: it will give you a new respect for your inner you.

The irony is that the long periods during which the patient has to remain motionless while undergoing the scan produce further immobility in J. She can barely get up, and has to load herself with pharmaceuticals before the exam in order to endure the pain of arising after the scan is over (which can be a period of 90 minutes or more for each scan, and they do at least two).

For the person who takes the patient to the MRI center, the experience can be somewhat of a misery as well. J's recent scan took place at an imaging office in Cincinnati that has a very small seating area, and a ceiling-mounted TV set that is never off. The volume setting is generally past "background" and very close to "annoy".

Since the scan took place in mid-afternoon, the TV was set to a channel that offered all the classics of the worst of American network television: Judge Mathis, Jerry Springer and Maury Povich held forth for the hours from 4 pm to 6. The first exemplifies impatience and intolerance, the second, ignorance, sex and violence, and the third immorality, the three great operating principles of public life in the US today. People suing each other over unimaginably trivial complaints are followed by women beating the crap out of each other over some neanderthal who has made one or more of them pregnant but whom they still love dearly, and finally a whole hour devoted to name-calling and swearing, all of which is bleeped out to the point where there is no way to follow a conversation, with the issue finally being settled when Maury pulls out a manila envelope and reads the results of the DNA paternity test.

Although I had taken J's MP3 player with me, I was unable to match the volume, so even though John Denver did his shrieking best to cover the background, I could still involuntarily follow the thread of each program. Another visitor sat impassively in one of the tiny chairs and worked on sudoku puzzles with such concentration that I concluded he was already deaf.

J's scan took so long that several patients had to leave for supper and come back. A mother with a young son and a teenage daughter who was wearing a knee cast, came in and began to fill in the medical history survey form. It wasn't long before she turned to me and said, "Isn't there anything else on?" Her young son was obviously enjoying lip-reading the animated dialog between the three women who were claiming that the Cro-Magnon across from them was the father of their various progeny.

I shrugged. "I've been staring at this stuff all afternoon. It's so fascinating to see real life."
She replied, "I can't even think about what I'm writing."
A moment later, she got up and went to the receptionist.
"Is there a remote for this TV?"
"Yes, here," and the small key to freedom was handed over.

Two or three clicks later we were watching NASCAR, but the roar of engines was muffled to nearly nothing.

I slapped myself mentally upside the head.

On her way to dinner, the mom said, "Here... you look like you could use this."
"I promise not to wear out the battery," I replied.

Surfing for a few minutes, I finally found the Discovery Channel, and spent the next half hour absorbed in the disasters that will finally overtake the earth when it is hit by the asteroid that we all know is out there. What a relief!