Science is scary

Ok, so the Tiny Tyrant has been unusually demanding lately, and because she insisted on walking the hillside with no shoes, she got spider bites or something on her feet and I've been carrying her around and now I've retorn the muscle in my shoulder.

So I got scheduled for an MRI. I've always loved the *look* of the MRI on House and other medical shows, and its ability to render soft-tissues visible in all their squishy glory has always seemed as close as we've yet got to the Enterprise's sickbay analyzers. I was stoked to go in, and kind of irked that they kept asking urgently whether I had claustrophobia or sensitive ears or prison tattoos and whatnot. Guys, I'm science literate. It's a big magnet. I'm totally excited to be a part of this thing. Merge me with the machine, and do it now.

So they made me empty my pockets, and then they strapped me in. Tightly. Okay, science enthusiasm waning slightly because this table resembles the strappy dungeon setup of the original Frankenstein flicks a leetle too much. Still cool though.

Then they shove the table inside and it was *tight*. I'm pretty thin - how the heck do they manage to put even moderately sized people into this gizmo? I was expecting a cozy techno hobbit hole, and instead the curving wall of grey plastic is about two centimeters shy of my frakking nose. And my arms are strapped tight, and now I realize that if something *does* go wrong, I can't possibly pull myself out of this thing. If the zombie apocalypse hits while I'm in there, they'll have eaten my feet well before I've wriggled free of this beast.

Then it turns on and HOLY CRAP THIS THING IS LOUD!!!! They had headphones on me, but they stopped working about one minute into the twenty minute experience, so I got a full nineteen of bazookas going off in my earholes. Not just a nice, constant thunder either, but a remarkably interesting soundscape in which, just as you got used to the dull pounding of the magnet, there would be a moment of silence, then about thirty seconds of screeching as it traversed to a new aspect, then silence, and just as you got calm again, a machine-gun rattle of some kind...I'm not going to compare it to combat, because I've never been, but I can't help but feel I'm a little closer to understanding the PTSD victim's almighty terror of sudden explosive noises.

So much for my techno-enthusiasm. Turns out it was one of the most surreal, nightmarish experiences of my life. I'm not sure whether being boozed before I'd gone in would have dulled the sensations, or heightened their hallucinatory effect.

Science scared the crap out of me. Yay science.