Scott Adams, aka Dilbert’s creator, gets an MRI. Here’s part of his report:
First you fill out a questionnaire designed to discover if you have any metal hidden in your body, such as shrapnel or IUDs or surgical leave-behinds and whatnot. This is important because the MRI is a gigantic magnet.
I’m almost positive that I don’t have an IUD, but the idea of metal ripping through my body and coming out of my ear really made me think about it carefully. I’m not what you call a good detail person, and it’s exactly the sort of thing I would forget having done, perhaps as a college prank. I took a chance and checked “no.”
I didn’t know how forgiving the MRI machine would be, so when I got to the question that asked if I ever worked around metal shaving, I started to panic. I spent countless hours in my youth working with an Etch-a-Sketch, and I don’t know what that grey stuff in there really is. I’d hate to die because I forgot to disclose how many times I tried and failed to draw a circle using only two knobs. But I also didn’t want to appear too concerned. For some reason I felt it was important to impress the MRI technician with my unnatural state of calm. So I took a chance and checked “no.”