I had an MRI earlier this month. Today, I had an MRV, which is an imaging test for veins that is done with the same machine. For the readers who haven’t done either of these tests, you basically have to play pretend as a corpse for half an hour inside a large metal donut that makes awful arrhythmic clanging noises. When you are trapped inside the machine, you have to be entirely still and suppress the intensifying feelings of claustrophobia.
Somehow, the donut takes images of organs and veins and bones. As I was lying there in the machine today, all I could think was, “How on earth does this thing work?” Surely something should have to get inside my body to take pictures of the inside of my body? Yet the test is entirely noninvasive. I’ve just spent a bit of time reading on the web, trying to understand how a huge magnet can produce photos of my intestines, and I’m still totally clueless. Modern medicine and technology really is amazing.