Please Don’t Fart in the MRI machine

This is my third life time MRI. You would think at this point I would Know better than to drink a giant Starbucks iced coffee an hour before my appointment. (Of course, a few hours before my first MRI when I was a little kid, I did not have an iced coffee. I was smarter than. Also my parents were smart enough not to let their kid drink coffee)

My original plan was to take a nap for the forty-five minutes I was expecting the MRI to take. My last MRI was in 2010 and yeah, I remember it being loud but I apparently don’t remember it well. It wasn’t just a little loud. I was surprised when the attendant handed me earplugs to wear inside the machine and soon I understood why. Even with earplugs I felt like I was in a battle zone. It sounded like gunshots one after another; well I was in San Bernardino, a city where the other night a friend of mine heard a drive by shooting happening near him. He called 911 and was told “The cops are too busy with another shooting on the other side of town, good luck!”

See why I hate leaving my mountain town to drive down the mountain to the city? But I guess they do not have MRI machines in rural areas. (And yes, we do have electricity and indoor plumbing) I hate having to drive down the mountain on a pretty spring day and this was for sure not one of thoseonce I reached the flatlands in the valley below my mountain home. The sky was a kind of dirty grey brown today. The color can really only be called smog if you were to go to Home Depot and buy it in a can to paint your dining room walls.

Suffice to say, I did not fall asleep in the MRI machine. Instead I lay there for thirty minutes and tried to hold the farts in. The technician who was helping me was a very nice man, and it’s bad enough he has to work in San Bernardino; home of the smoggy skies and drive by shootings without the smelly girl with the upset stomach who just had to have an iced coffee before her MRI farting in his MRI machine.

I’m blessed to be a person with no phobias; claustro,  arachno or acro. I’m blessed because I just spent thirty minutes in a tiny metal MRI machine wishing I wasn’t full of coffee, bloated and gassy. Here I am complaining about this but I was talking about my MRI to a friend who is claustrophobic and she couldn’t even bear to think about doing what I just did.

My biggest fear today was embarrassing myself in front of the nice technician man. He is super nice and I feel like I’m going to get yelled at the whole time for making the MRI machine smell like it acrid Starbucks death.

So to end one story and begin another… I did not fart in the MRI machine.

Hurray!

Follow up

The next day I went to my follow-up appointment at the doctor’s office. I swear this doctors office I go to is so ass backwards.

I left my MRI on disk in my car when I signed in for my appointment. I told the receptionist I was just going to run out to my car to get it.

She said “Oh you don’t need to do that, a copy of it was sent to your doctor. She has it on file”

When my doctor eventually saunters into the exam room I explain to her I had my MRI done yesterday and that I was told she had it. She explained that she had to call the imaging company and have them fax it over.

So I waited. And I waited.

And I waited some more.

Mean while I could see my car right out side the window of the exam room with the disk in it! She left me waiting for over forty-five minutes while waiting for my MRI results to be faxed over.

After forty-five minutes I was starving and forced to eat my emergency sandwich I brought in with me. Obviously I had brought an egg salad sandwich as my snack that day.

You know what, if the doctor didn’t want her exam room to smell like farts, she shouldn’t leave me waiting an hour and a half!

And this is why you should never leave me waiting any where. Eventually I will get annoyed with sitting still, and probably hungry, and something will end up smelling like farts.