Today was one of those rare days where I get to throw off the shackles of cubicle life and venture out into the real world to where the medical mavens serving the Department of Health (and who would rename a department so that it has the acronym Doh anyway?) see real patients with real problems. It makes a nice change to get a little closer to the coal face so to speak although being confined to a windowless room mindlessly copying screenshots into a test results document is not my idea of fun. The compensation is that I get to share the room with interesting people who don't mind playing the odd CD whilst we work and are lots of fun to talk to.
Anyway so here I am checking test results of one sort and one of the people in the room gets a phone call:"Is there anyone around who would be prepared to act as a guinea pig for a new radiographer in training on the big MRI machine in the new radiology department?" "Sure" I say, "why not?" "Hip or shoulder" they ask? Being mindful of the vagaries of drafty patient gowns I prudently opt for the shoulder option. 1:30 OK ? they ask. Sure I say, not really sure what I have got myself into.
And so it was that I had an appointment to be shoved into a constricted plastic tube with my arms strapped to my side and ear plugs in my ears and told to lie perfectly still whilst a big machine made lots of very loud disturbing noises around me for 1/2 an hour. The noises went something like this: first there was a few low volume thunks in the innards of the machine. Then there would be a short burst of some fast or slow paced loud throbbing kind of noise which I guess was to let me know what I was in for next and, after a short pause, about 5 minutes of loud throbbing noises the same which I assume was the real test.
After I got over my initial nerves it was all sort of relaxing in a not so relaxing way, sort of like trying to go to sleep on a long haul flight. Bits of you are cold from the air conditioning (the bits sticking out of the machine or the bits sticking out of those all too small aircraft blankets) and bits of you are warm. You are nearly comfortable (more so in the MRI than on an aircraft) and there is this pervasive noise around you that varies enough so that you can't completely ignore it and go to sleep but enough to make you sleepy.
As I say a weird day. They promised to get back to me if they actually found anything wrong with my shoulder but they offered a preliminary opinion that it was fine.
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