MRI

On Monday I saw a podiatrist who said my foot problem might be a partial tear of my plantar fascia. Funny thing is, she said it is sometimes better if it tears completely. The reason why the pain is so bad is usually because a partial tear results in inflammation and irritation. She gave me a bunch of exercises to do, made a pad for me to wear in order to give me some arch support, told me not to run (no surprise there), and told me to get an MRI.

I've only had one MRI before, and I couldn't remember how long it took. I only remember that I felt claustrophobic because it was for my head, and there isn't a whole lot of room inside that machine. There was a mirror so that I could see the technician, standing safely outside of the room.

Yesterday morning I got the MRI for my foot. Luckily, all I had to was stick my foot in the machine. The podiatrist who sent me for the MRI wrote out some instructions for the MRI technician. The instructions said I was supposed to get a "contrast" MRI. I found out from the technician that "contrast" meant he was supposed to inject me with dye. Hmmm...I'm not afraid of pain, by an means. But I didn't like the sound of having anything artificial injected into my body. The technician couldn't understand why I needed the dye and decided to do the MRI without it.

The technician gave me some earplugs, put my foot in the machine, and gave me a little balloon-like thingy to squeeze if I needed anything. There was a digital clock that read "00:00" on the machine. After a couple of minutes, the machine began to make noise and the digital clock began to move. It set itself to 2:47, or something like that. So I thought, "Oh great! This is going to be quick." Funny how, under normal circumstances, 2:47 would be a very short time period. But of course, I was looking at the clock and it seemed to be taking FOREVER. I decided to either close my eyes or look away. So I averted my eyes for what seemed like 2 minutes. I thought surely the clock must have been under 1 minute. When I looked at the clock, it was at 2:05. DOH!

I decided to close my eyes until the machine stopped. When the machine finally made a noise that sounded like it was finished, I looked at the clock and sure enough, it was at 0.

Unfortunately, it reset itself to 4+ minutes. OK, I realized this was not going to be as quick as I thought it would be. To make a long story a LITTLE bit shorter, this little process of the machine counting down to 0 and then resetting itself lasted for a total of 30 minutes! At two different times, I actually fell asleep. I tried not to because I was worried about having a muscle spasm and having to go through the whole thing again. I was relieved when it was finally over. I hope the MRI shows something useful.