I thought I'd create a thread downstairs so some of us can publicly share things that had been mostly in various upstairs threads about What's making me Happy, Sad, Rabid, Comatose, etc. If you want to keep something out of the public eye, the upstairs threads are still there. Otherwise, feel free to share it with everyone down here.
I'm having some shoulder issues. Sadly, didn't have time for a full diagnosis before a 2 week trip out of China. Worse, after 2 weeks of being super-careful, I had to grab my excessively heavy laptop bag with the wrong arm while putting it in an overhead bin for my flight back to China.
Managed to get to the hospital on Saturday. They think it's a damaged tendon and set me up for an MRI. Silly me. I assumed I'd wander over to the Diagnostic Imaging area and wait until my name was called (or for the confused look, since my first name doesn't work in Chinese). Instead, it turns out that MRIs usually need to be scheduled a week in advance.
The good news - with Spring Festival causing most of the population to leave Donnguan, I only had to wait until Sunday evening. Bad news: I will have to wait somewhat longer for a doctor to check the results.
So, ended up finding my way to MRI land (English labels were mixed between MR and MRI. Some Chinese signs had the original name of the procedure NMR - Nuclear Magnetic Resonance - a far too scary name for the audience in American hospitals) and waited for my appointment. Only had to wait about an extra 20 minutes before I was shown in, pushed back on the table (catching my injured shoulder on some projection
), and had ear protection slapped onto my head.
Sadly, before I could react, the tech ran from the room as the table slid me into the narrow confines of the machine. The goal is to stay as still as possible other than breathing. I had a stray hair on one cheek that kept me constantly struggling not to reach up and brush it aside. Also, the ear protection wasn't firmly seated and felt like it was going to fall off the whole time. So, instead of tuning out and trying to sleep through the sounds of massive magnets probing the nuclei of my atoms, I spent the whole time inside desperately resisting the urge to get that hair off my cheek and to push the ear protectors on more firmly. Subjective time inside - several months. Objective time inside - about 18 minutes.
Now to wait for the doctors to come back from their holiday so I can see how good or bad the news is.