Funny Bones

Got the official green light to go ahead and continue abusing my elbow as if it were never broken (woo hoo!) and immediately planned a rafting trip and a run on the Cyclone! Buuuut, it turns out Dr. McSlowass didn't like the looks of my old "walking" injury to my foot and sent me for an MRI. Let the bilking proceed.

So I'm laying in the MRI machine, head hanging out of the magnetic monster and left foot inside the tube, bent at a drastic and unnatural angle. I'm on my back, staring up at the tiled ceiling. I have to hold still like this, perfectly still, for at least a half hour. For some of you this might not seem like such a daunting task (*cough* Scott *cough*), but for me it's akin to skipping dinner --just not going to happen. So many thoughts running through my head as the white light of the fake tiled sky rains down on me. I'm trying to think about anything besides the waves of radiation painting my twisted foot that so desperately wants to twitch. I wondered, for example, why they would position the injured limb in such an excruciating manner as part of the solution. I also wondered whether it was a really bad sign that my mother, who is twice my age, and I both had our first ever MRI's this week. Is all this exercise causing me to deteriorate at twice the natural pace? Am I experiencing a marrow-robbing frosting deficiency? I wondered why the technician had me remove my glasses before asking me to walk across the room on my injured foot and then pounce upon a high table. I stared at the blurry, blurry sky and continued to wonder about her training and people skills when fifteen minutes into the deafening magnetic testing she busted into the room and asked, "are you sure you've never had surgery on that ankle?".

"Oh yeah, that's right!" I answered, "I *did* have surgery on that ankle. I totally forgot about that surgery! I know you asked me four other times if I'd ever had any surgeries but I just totally forgot that I had. What with all my surgeries it's just plum near impossible to keep up. I'm sure you know how it is, sugar! So sorry. Shall we start this entire process all over again now"?

Which is exactly what we did when Ms. Nightingale figured out that I was wearing a silver anklet near the twisted toes in question.

I'm sure the tree-lined faux skyscape ceiling was designed to be calming, but much like anything else that takes place after my glasses come off, it left me in an inebriated state of blurry bewilderment. I spent the rest of the (now hour long) MRI session concentrating on anything but the terminal part of my leg and wondering about things like the caloric content of an entire turkey, what exactly a Cleric does all day, and the difference between directions and instructions (besides the fact that L doesn't believe in either -- Happy Birthday, gorgeous).