MRI magic

March 15th, 2006 | by ian |

Looking inside yourself is quite surreal, and I’m not talking about introspection: I had an MRI scan due to a nagging back injury from indoor ultimate. The whole process was quite fast, about 20 minutes. You get loaded into a very tight space so this is definitely not for the claustrophobic – I’m 5’9″and 180lbs (maybe a few more) and I was uncomfortable…I can’t imagine what it would have been like if I were a size or two larger. Another feature of the MRI…you can really feel your body heat up in the tube, and not just because it is an enclosed space (I’m pretty sure about this). Clearly there is some energy absorbed and radiated as heat. Anyhow what was REALLY cool is they gave me a CD with @100 hi-res pictures on it. Here is a choice sample:

Ok so thats a relief, looks like I haven’t blown any discs or cracked vertebrae from this angle. Dunno what the white stuff is in between the vertebrae. Maybe someone who knows a thing or two about anatomy can answer that (frack, I could have sworn that I studied biology) .

Now check out the front view, something looks out of whack:

It looks like the right hip is higher than the left…which may be putting lateral pressure on the lower spine. Perhaps my right leg is longer than the other, but thats as far as I will go with the self-diagnosis. When someone who knows what they are talking about gives me an opinion I will post again. Anyway, all this to say that the MRI was a cool experience.

  1. 2 Responses to “MRI magic”

  2. By Lisa on Mar 17, 2006 | Reply

    The white stuff is the nerves that come out from ur spinal cord. Basically on the MRI on most images, the closer something is to the consistency of water, the whiter it appears. Hence, the bones are blackish which is the opposite of on a CT scan where they are white. You may be right about the hips but in these tests, a lot of the asymmetry is just because of how you were rotated in relation to the machine. So all is probably normal!! Too bad you didnt show any pics of your FAT LEGS!!

  3. By Lisa on Mar 17, 2006 | Reply

    Sorry the fat legs comment was referring to Dan of Paradrenaline fame – we used to tease him about his big muscles in school :-P

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