It’s been a busy week so far. On Monday I went in for an MRI of my back to figure out exactly what’s going on with it. Procedure took 30-40 minutes. It is one of the creepiest things you’ll ever do. I felt like I was lying in a coffin or something because you lie down on this thing and it rolls you into this tiny ass chamber. They give you earplugs because these huge magnets are gonna be moving really fast to create a field to get the Magnetic Resonance Image. You can read more about it here. It gets super loud in that chamber. I’m glad I don’t have any metal in my body.
I asked the radiologist to show me the results of the MRI after the procedure was performed. There were several images of me vertically, showing the discs in the back, the spinal cord and the vertebrae. It looks, from my inspection and the radiologist’s, that one of my discs is pushing up on my spinal cord. Shitty. There were also a bunch more images that were basically pictures of cross sections of me at each vertebrae. Its really weird seeing yourself like that… in successive slabs of meat. It was sort of cool though, because you can see all the major arteries in your back, the spinal canal, discs and the vertebrae.
Tuesday I went in to see a physiatrist that my regular doctor referred me to. Her name was Cindy Wun. I haven’t been to a female doctor before. Ever. She was really good, very thorough and spent about an hour with me. Good news is that its probably nothing incredibly serious but she’s still waiting to see the MRI results before she can rule the worst-case scenario out.
In the meanwhile, I’ve stopped taking all medicine because I’ve been out of touch with how my back and body really feels for a long time now. I plan to stay off them for a little while just to get everything out of my system, then start up again later.
I’m starting to burn cds again. It feels like I’ve taken a 4 year hiatus from it. Picked up some cdrs, a labeler, and a bunch of labels from office depot. Some of my old cds are starting to bite the dust so I’m replacing them… Thanks to Erik for helping me get my windows 2003 server machine up to date to actually burn cds =)
oi, i’m getting old.
going up to tahoe tomorrow through sunday… looking forward to it.
heard from pita that he made it safely to china, babak has landed safely in boston and ben in korea. i think don’s email hit the nail on the head about when we’ll all be together again. c’mon guys, get to it! 
just kidding.
hope everyone has a good labor day weekend! (leave me some comments or something =P)