Herald and Journal Herald & Journal, April 6, 1998  Adventures
of the MRI tube   Chances are, someday you'll meet the MRI.
It's one of the greatest advances of medicine in this century. I
never heard of it until I had my stroke almost three years ago.
The initials stand for magnetic resonance imaging. The machine
is making the old fashioned dangerous X-rays obsolete. MRI is
non-intrusive and harmless to the body; needless to say, the
machine itself and operation of it is expensive. It's state-of-
the-art medicine.  My first visit to the MRI was while I was
still a patient at the Veterans Hospital in Minneapolis. The
orderly wheeled me in a wheelchair down into the bowels of the
building, away from everything and everyone. I was told to take
off all my clothes except my underwear and to put on the famous
hospital gown they handed me.  Then they wheeled me into the
room where the MRI was located (after giving me a sedative).
There was a long tube that looked like it was made for a
basketball player. The attend