Pounding

My latest MRI is done and dusted and now I'm just waiting for my neurologist to interpret the results.

It was a slightly shorter scan than I'd anticipated at around 30 minutes and I only had chance to get through a few of the tunes on the CD I'd chosen to have pumped through the (not massively effective) noise reducing headphones.

This was the first time that I'd realised that the hospital staff were also being subjected to my musical taste - I had previously assumed that they were able to just send it directly to me without having to suffer/enjoy it in their control room.

The thought of having to listen to other peoples' music choices while working - like being in an office with a radio stuck on a station you hate - made me shudder slightly.
But not too much: no moving allowed in the tube.

It's not easy to find suitable music for the scanner. Once, with an MRI on Christmas Eve, I was saved from having to make my own decision by having festive music selected for me as I slid my way in.

The staff explained they were desperately trying to help everyone enter into the festive spirit, hence the seasonal songs and the tinsel around the tiny tube. But I have never been able to listen to When Santa got stuck up the chimney in the same way again.

Sunday's scan indicated that while I had hit the jackpot with some of songs on my chosen CD, the opening bars of Wide Open Space by Mansun were a little ironic given that I was trapped motionless in tiny tube under a face cage.

But what was undoubtedly successful was this week's tune. It somehow fit the swooshing and clanging of the magnets without jarring uncomfortably.

With a carpe diem chorus, it is relentlessly and joyously anthemic - and that's what you need when you're stuck in a cylinder with just your chronic disease for company.

I'm pretty sure this particular listening scenario is not what the band had in mind when they were composing, but I'm delighted they wrote it anyway.

:: Pounding by Doves