My MRI and why can't hospitals be more like Scrubs...

I had to have an MRI this week and let me just say this, it wasn't at all what I had expected...

Firstly I had to sit in the waiting room and drink a bizarre cocktail of what tasted like blackcurrant gone wrong and aniseed - 1.5 litres of the stuff! Now don't worry, it is not the same for all conditions, apparently different MRI investigations require different potions as I found out. What I had was a contrast agent.

Anyway, as I sat in the waiting room drinking my mutant gunk, I was joined by two elderly gentlemen, one of whom was with his wife. Both men were drinking what appeared to be water but, judging by his reaction while gulping it down, it was obviously some kind of concoction too. Someone asked if they could have some of my drink but I had to decline with the comment 'I don't think that's allowed'.

The wierdest thing was that while we slugged our liquid down, we got chatting in some sort of amiable way, held together by our need to find answers - It was like being at a really strange cocktail party. It started as one guy was complaining about having to drink what we thought was water and I said 'Hey, it could be worse, you could be drinking this blackcurrant nonsense'.

The man to my left with his wife proceeded to explain that he had a cyst on his kidney that no one could find for eight years. He explained that now he can't eat eggs but that he still has them 'every day of my life'. At which point his wife interjected with 'No you don't, ooh you liar, you don't!' to which he replied 'Of course I do woman, I had some this morning for my breakfast!'. It became quite comical as everything that he said he was not allowed to have but he did have became a bickering match with his kindly wife who said 'You don't have that!!'.

Just as everything was starting to get more unreal I realised that I had finished the 1 litre of contrast agent and everyone hoorahed and said 'there you go, you've finished, stop moaning'. This relief was dissipated quickly as the nurse came back into the waiting room to give me the other 500ml. Now, I try not to moan, I really do try, but I just couldn't finish the whole lot - sat there in the strange pub like area with a mangled polite smile on my face due to the taste of the liquid - try as I might I could only manage 1.3l of the stuff and that was an almighty struggle.

By this point I felt sick and immensely sorry for myself when several things started to make me feel a bit less pity for myself and a bit more pity for the two gents beside me.

The guy on the left had just finished telling me the kidney cyst story and the pills he had had to take when the gent beside me piped up with 'When I had cancer, during chemo I had to take medication that was so toxic that I wasn't allowed to touch it as I swallowed it!'. I'm not sure how that works exactly but it sounded pretty horrific. At this point the guy on my left said 'That's pretty bad but I have a heart murmur too'. Sympathy seemed to shift in the room and I noticed some of the other waiting patients drawing forward, poised for the disease-off that was sure to follow...

The gent to my life swigged back his gunk disguised as water and said 'Well I have diabetes and when I had this stuff last time I had a blood sugar level of 2.2!'

They both looked at me as if I were either a referee or that I was going to come up with a disease so horrific that it would trump all theirs and leave them reeling.

I cleared my throat then said, possibly rather pathetically, 'erm...I've had a pain in my pelvis for 4 months and the MRI is hopefully going to find the cause'. Bang! like a game of poker it didn't seem as bad as their diseases and they went back to challenging each other.

Sadly I was removed from the room to have my scan before they got to the real climax of their apparent disease off. I was taken into a room and told to remove my clothes except for my pants and socks - mmm, attractive huh? Then to put on a gown that fastened at the back - is this for a purpose or just to make it a bit more embarrassing if it suddenly flies open?

I sort of imagined it would be like Scrubs, perhaps I just watch way too much tv or perhaps it's just that in real life things are never as funny as they are on the tv, but it was all very clinical and not jokey in the least - which is a shame as the only thing I wanted to take away the fear was a bit of a laugh.

They took me into the MRI room wehich actually seemed quite cheery and I gave them my CD. They can play you a CD while you have the scan and they put kicking headphones on you which makes you feel like a DJ (Well, it made me feel like I a DJ but I'm quite sad and have an overactive imagination).

My glasses and hair band was removed but I got to keep my engagement and wedding ring on as they were made of platinum and I was placed on a bed, poised to enter the enormous machine.

All I can say is that I am really glad I am not claustraphobic as there felt like there was only about 4 inches between my nose and the top of the scanner. I was basically in a tube. Now, I have many fears in life and I spend a great deal of my waking life worrying about a variety of horrible scenarios and just before the lady wheeled me into the MRI machine she said 'it may be a little warm in there after a while but it's fine as there is a fan at the top of the machine to keep you nice and cool'. To anyone else this would have been immensely comforting, but to me with my diseased mind I thought 'How close to me is the fan??? But my hair is now loose, what if it gets stuck in the fan!!!'. I then thought 'oh no, what if the fan is at the top of the tube and the bed gets pushed too far and my head gets sliced into pieces by the fan like a meat slicing machine!!!'. Let me tell you, Not Going To Happen!!!. After a mild 30 second panic attack in my head I managed to lie still in the machine with panels placed on my abdomen, presumably to aid the scan.

All I can say is that, it didn't seem like it always does on shows like House. I sort of expected a bang bang bang noise but to my panic soaked brain it sounded like the sound of a dot matrix printer or a photocopier of sorts. I spent probably 30 mins in the machine - most of which was divided between the fan worries, fears that I actually might be claustraphobic and then realising that I'm just not, listening to Nina Simone quietly singing 'I put a spell on you' and wondering if the printer noise was actually the photocopying of my body (As if they might scan me, take out the bad bits and then send the copy out as me and leave me in the tube forever...until the fan got me.

As it was, they pulled me out of the machine after about 30 mins and told me to get dressed and go home - not so much as a 'Mind how you go' or anything but with a 'Your doctor will get your results in about 2 weeks'.

So now I wait...