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Resonance

Wrist MRI from Ariel on Vimeo.

I got the unofficial friend-of-the-family radiology report, and whoah, my wrist is a mess. I can't even remember everything that is wrong. In addition to the horizontal impaction fracture, there is a fracture perpendicular to that one that goes all the way into the wrist joint. (This is obvious on the MRI even to me.) There is some shortening of the radius as a result of the impact. The scaphoid is not fractured (whew). One of the other small bones is contused. There is some soft-tissue damage and carpal tunnel impingement. This may cause problems later on.

All this from such a seemingly simple accident! When you hang out with cyclists, you get used to hearing about really messy injuries. Hands going into spokes at high speed. Cyclists crashing and then getting run over by the rider(s) behind them. All I did was slip on some ice, and in the words of Emeril Lagasse (though not as he intended them): Bam.

Incidentally, I wasn't allowed to take a camera (or anything else metallic) with me into the MRI machine, but I wish I could have gotten a photo of the hilarity as I was rolled into the tube arm-first. My left arm was fixed in some sort of plastic torture device, still in its cast, and then I was instructed to get comfortable. Ha! This involved me wriggling into position lying on my belly. I tucked my good (right) arm under my chin, thinking I could hold still that way for 20 minutes. Five minutes in, my right arm started to throb under the weight of my head. But I didn't want to mess up the whole thing with so much as a twitch.

When they finally pulled me out of the tube, I had a chin-shaped divot in my right arm. Ow. But totally worth it! I got a great souvenir CD of my MRI to take home.

January 14, 2008 10:16 PM