I'm Bendin' Spoons.

So the score looks like this: Insurance 482, Emily 1.

They have finally allowed the MRI, Friends. I felt a little bit like Aladdin being granted a wish by the genie. But only if the genie were an evil corporation profiting on my pain and yelling, "dance, monkey girl, dance!" and if I were a little boy from the middle east that had a fondness for wearing hammer pants and vests without a shirt underneath.

Okay. So it's not the same, really.

I totally can't pull off just a vest. Oh, no. Just no.

But I can totally pull off a hat. And I think Aladdin wore a hat.

Anyway, they said yes. I threw out a grand number of expletives and thank yous and the MRI was done on Friday.

Here's how that went:

Technician: You can't move at all.
Me: Not at all?
T: Not unless you want me to do it over again.
M: And this whole process will take...?
T: An hour.
M: Excuse me?
T: ONE. HOUR... Unless you move.
M: Like, can I stretch the parts that aren't in the machine?
T: No, that would change the electric force field.
M:Ohmygod.


So he put some headphones on me and I went in the MRI machine, feet first up to the chest. I was like, "Easy peasy, it's like a tanning bed." He talked to me a couple of times and I nodded and got yelled at so I tried to speak without moving my lips and we got started.

Apparently I looked to him like a girl that liked to get her party on, because he put dance music in my ears the whole freaking time. I didn't want to be all lame and ask the voice in my ears for Simon & Garfunkel or maybe some Carol King, but can I just say? The mash-ups and beats did NOT help me go to my happy place.  I'm not anti-club music but holy crap.

So I practiced breathing techniques and counted the ceiling tiles and told myself that this time will just fly by. Like lightning.

It didn't.

I just sat there, listening to the club mix and the man in my ears as the paper began to rise underneath my legs and every hair follicle on my lower half went crazy. It is the most bizarre sensation. I also started having involuntary muscle twitches. At one point he yelled, "Stop moving!" and my response was a muffled, tight-lipped, "The entire definition of involuntary muscle spasms is that I HAVE NO CONTROL OVER THEM!" and I didn't. It was like, my entire leg, flopping in the force field. Toes bending completely. I started wondering if anyone had spontaneously combusted in the machine. Then I started to count tiles again, because shit, I scared myself. And I was deathly afraid that I would have to do this sitting completely still thing again. You know, if I didn't spontaneously burst into flames first.

When all the flying paper and rising follicles and twitching was done, he came in. It was the second time he had come in, the first time was half way through and he was yelling "Don't move, don't move!" and he had to adjust something before the second MRI. I couldn't even stretch. So that second time, I just sat there. He said I could move and I was all, "Are you sure?"

And I could not sit up. I was so weak from holding still that I could not even move and he had to help me up and I might have flashed him a teeny tiny bit. I couldn't walk, either. So I just sat there. When I left the room, I was SURE that everything metal was going to come flying towards me and I would die a horrible death by utensils and magnets.

I didn't.

When I staggered out to the waiting room, Jeremiah announced that AN HOUR AND A HALF had passed. I told him we had bigger problems because I was now super human. I was an MRI gone wrong.

Then I realized: Those assholes lied to me. They said it would be only an hour.

I think I shall use my powers for evil.