1. “We are all X-men” series: MRI – claustrophobia
As any tale, this one starts with a mundane fact. So, once upon a time, this powerlifter felt a little sore on the shoulder and sought her dear orthopedist, who promptly identified a acro-myo-clavicular injury, also known as weight-lifter’s osteolysis. That was in June 2007. He asked her to get a MRI, which she avoided as much as she could. For years she had been telling herself that she was extremely claustrophobic and could never handle the MRI tube. She had a couple of MRI’s done under sedation, which is a pain in the a** to schedule.
So, she never got the image, treated the injury with a very short rest and not much else and kept benching. Eventually, of course, the soreness returned, which she systematically ignored. Her ortho-guru, on the other hand, insisted that this year she had to have the MRI, if only to follow the progress of the chronic degenerative injury.
At this point, the lifter was a tai-chi and meditation practitioner (very novice and unexperienced, though) and decided that, WTF, claustrophobia was for jellyfish and nerds, and she would get the f* MRI’s as cool as a refrigerator.
A week later, this Padawan-lifter did the most stupid ever finalization workout and succeeded in screwing her elbow, which felt more than just sore. So, the ortho-guru, with all his patience, required an extra MRI for the elbow (curiously, all on the left side).
The zen-lifter then scheduled both MRI’s for the same day. She took her meditation CD’s with her, which was useless, since the sound system was broken. They offered her a little ear-stopper to muffle the machine noise, which is weird and sounds like some extra-terrestrial techno or rave party.
She actually managed to meditate inside the tube during both MRI sessions because the noise is interestingly meditative. They should study that. However, the elbow was so swollen that the lab had her return the following day for two extra sessions with different contrasts. Since all her previous MRI’s were done under sedation and she didn’t really study the images, she was not familiar with MRI contrasts.
She managed to meditate again, although this time she had to struggle against feeling the elbow pain and the numbing fingers, since the technicians accidently hyper-extended her swollen elbow.
That was Friday, February the 8th. She was very happy with herself, since her thesis that “claustrophobia is just a name and WTF I can handle it” had been verified. She was also confident that she would bench 242lb Monday (she is a 123lb category lifter) because she had an “insight” about technique.
She did not lift Monday, nor the next Monday and for that matter she won’t lift until March the 18th. Actually, Monday she learned that she might possibly never lift again and that this “never” could be quite a short period, since she may have had developed a pretty serious, possibly lethal, disease.
Follow the next chapter on “the DX”!!!
