Act Your Age... Getting an MRI

First appeared in the April 1, 2011 issue of Retirement News Weekly

When I saw the advertisement on Kijiji looking for people willing to get an MRI, there were many things that went through my mind. What if I had a “special” brain and this MRI revealed how unique I really am? What if I had a brain tumour and this MRI saved my life? Wouldn’t a picture of my brain make a cool Facebook profile? What never crossed my mind was the need for concern.

It was without concern that I signed up for the research study which promised to pay $90 and provide a set of pictures of my brain. Without concern, I visited the lab for the first time for various cognitive tests and word games. And it was without concern that I was led by a young German woman to the Neuroimaging Lab on my second visit to have my MRI.

However, when I was sat down in the viewing room and a man began to go over my medical history, it finally donned on me that perhaps I should have been more concerned. The man focused on questions that would help determine if there was any possibility that metal could be inside my body. He explained that the magnetic resonance imaging machine (MRI) worked with giant magnets and if there was any metal on or in me it would be pulled into the machine. However, to get to the machine, the metal would likely travel through my brain in the process and kill me on the spot.

“I’d hate to be the next guy getting an MRI,” I joked uncomfortably.

We determined that I was metal free and I finally entered the room with the MRI. The machine was enormous and seemed to take up half the room. If you’ve never seen an MRI machine, imagine a giant, long marshmallow made of plastic lying on its side. In the middle of the marshmallow is a hole and in front of the hole is a table on wheels. At the top of the table is a much smaller tube, slightly larger than a person’s cranium.

I pulled myself onto that table and the German girl taped a Vitamin B tablet to my forehead. Apparently it’s sometimes difficult to determine which side of the brain is left or right and the tablet would shine brightly on the MRI and identify the left side. I then lied down on the table and placed my head into the smaller tube. The technician who would be running the MRI (a man who would be played by Judge Reinhold if my MRI was made into a movie) pressed baseball-sized pillows around my head so I didn’t have to hold it steady by myself. I was then manually slid into the larger tube.

I point out that I was manually slid into the tube because there is a machine that would have slid me into the tube at the push of a button. However, the technician had warned me that sometimes it didn’t work when the patient was too heavy. They requested two additional technicians to help push me into the MRI. Very flattering.

The inside of the tube seemed almost black. My arms could not bend at the elbows without hitting the roof of the tube. And given that my head was lodged firmly where it was with pillows, I wasn’t going anywhere. Yet I was still fairly calm. Looking straight up from my lying position, all I could see was a mirror positioned directly in front of my eyes. This allowed me to see outside of the tube and into the viewing room. A radio in the headphones I was wearing allowed me to keep in contact with the experimenters, while playing a local radio station when we weren’t talking.

“What radio station do you want?” they asked. I’d recently been hanging out with a quirky lady who was a part-time promotions girl at Q104 so I asked for that station. The soft rock music began to play through the set. They let it play for a few moments and then it abruptly cut out, while they warned that the first scan would start soon. The music returned, but was soon drowned out by the whirring of the machine. It sounded like a piece of heavy plastic being flicked every few seconds. It was a grating click, click, click sound.

It was during this first scan that I panicked. I was lying in this tube, unable to move, with the radio playing in my ears. But what got to me was the fear of being bored. I’d spent six months applying to jobs, getting over a horrible break up, and ultimately just trying to keep pushing forward. Trapped in this tube I was suddenly without distraction and faced with the weight of everything I was trying and failing to do. I took a deep breath. I took another. And I forced myself to focus on Neil Young’s Heart of Gold.

Before too long, the clicking stopped and I was calm once again. The experimenters asked if everything was okay and I told them to crank the music. They adjusted the volume, made a few reassuring comments, and then the next scan began. Each scan took 7 to 14 minutes and I would try to lie as still as possible.

Other than this minor panic, the MRI was no problem. During the third scan, I felt my nose start to itch and as carefully as possible, without moving my head, I lifted my right hand to scratch. Around the fourth scan, the rhythmic clicking and soft rock lulled me to sleep. After 80 minutes in the tube, the radio turned off and Judge Reinhold’s look-a-like told me the MRI was over. Four technicians entered my room and pulled me out.

Judge said with a smile, “You looked relaxed.”

“No problem,” I told him. I was debriefed, given another $30 and three days later my Facebook profile was a picture of my tumour-free, typical brain!

I Can Explain... Wikipedia

Originally published on February 25, 2011 in Retirement News Weekly

Google any word right now: retirement, beagles, existentialism. It doesn’t really matter what the word is. What you’ll likely find as one of your top three search results is an entry from Wikipedia. This collection of editable information has increasingly been used as a go-to source for quick explanations and understanding. But what is it, is it reliable, and what do its detractors say? In my own sort of Wikipedia entry-with attitude... I can explain!

Let’s start with the word itself. Wikipedia is a combination of the words “encyclopaedia” and “wiki.” We all know what an encyclopaedia is, but what, you may ask, is a wiki? And is it at all similar to a kiwi?

A wiki is a particular type of website that allows any user to edit its content. I’ve seen it used by businesses to compile schedules and stories; as well, I’ve seen it used in classrooms where a teacher may have his students create a wiki collectively with all the information they learned in class (Thanks, Professor Bradley!).

Wikipedia is just a very popular online encyclopaedia in wiki form. It was launched in 2001 as an experiment and now contains over 17 million articles in multiple languages. These articles were written by average people across the world and are corrected and edited by anyone with access to the internet. The theory is that with so many editors balancing out information, the ‘truth’ will be revealed. Users are strongly encouraged to cite their sources and uncited information is flagged as requiring further research. However the site does not leave it up entirely to its users and hires teams of individuals that oversee software which is ensures that entries are not edited for the purpose of mockery or misinformation. This team also can lock certain entries to prevent any editing if the entry is controversial and a target for vandalism.

One example of this is a stunt pulled by Stephen Colbert, a popular TV-personality and satirist, in 2006. On his show he explained how Wikipedia has created a kind-of “wikiality” in which anyone can edit and post information on the website and if enough people agree, the new information becomes a sort of digital truth. He changed his own Wikipedia post, George Washington’s, and then encouraged his viewers to edit posts about elephants. He wanted them to say that the population of elephants has tripled in the last six months. By changing it on Wikipedia, it would become reality he declared to playfully mock the idea of truth in an editable age. Twenty different articles were edited within the hour and Colbert was blocked from the site.

Critics of Wikipedia say that since the information is often edited by average people and not experts, it is not accurate or reliable. Others say the site focuses too much on Popular Culture, with 30% of its articles on culture and the arts and 15% on biographies; comparatively only 2% of the articles are on health and 2% are on religion. Conservapedia is similar to Wikipedia in format. However it claims that Wikipedia has a left-wing biased. It presents its articles with a very distinctive American-Conservative spin.

Whether you’re getting your information from television, books, or sites like Wikipedia it’s good that you’re at least trying to stay informed and I applaud you. While the site may not always be accurate, it has made information accessible and allowed for user generated content and editing. This development means we can all contribute to a better understanding of the world around us and that can’t be too bad.

Act Your Age… Enjoying the View

As I wrote in last week’s Act Your Age, I am very goal oriented when being a tourist on vacation. I have a check-list of the things I want to see in each city. As I see each site I often get more enjoyment from crossing the item off my list than from actually experiencing it. It was a running joke throughout my recent Europe trip that I spent more time looking at my lists than at any of the wonders we saw. And we certainly saw some incredible things: the Coliseum in Rome, the Eiffel Tower and Catacombs in Paris, the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, and the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City to name a few.

But it’s one thing to put something on a list and another to experience it. At the beginning of the trip, I don’t think I realized that. There is a church in Barcelona called the Sagrada Familia. We went to the very peak of the church tower and looked across the city from its highest point. The city sprawled out in front of us, but I was hungry and looked forward to our next stop, Spanish McDonalds. Days later, we went to the top of Mount Tibidabo. At the peak of this small mountain is an amusement part with swings that seem to almost throw you off the edge of the mountain. It was an incredible view, but I was distracted by the next stop on our list; the roller coaster. I hate roller coasters and I was thoroughly distracted.

This sort of distraction continued throughout the trip. That weekend, we took an hour train ride out of Barcelona to Montserrat, a monastery at the top of a mountain. Our group took a ten-minute cable car to the monastery, a funicular (basically a train that goes diagonally up a mountain), and then hiked for an hour to reach the very peak of St. Jerome, which is 1,236 m above sea level. The view was breath-taking, without a doubt, but at the time I didn’t really know what breath-taking meant. Certainly staring out across the world, the winds billowing around us, I was moved by the view. But I also knew if we didn’t leave within five minutes we’d likely miss the last cable car down the mountain and be stuck at Montserrat overnight. So I took my pictures and rushed down.

My girlfriend had already seen Rome, so during our week in the city I had purposefully looked into doing some side trips so she could see something new. During my research I found Capri, which is a resort island known for its lemon flavoured liquor and so-called breath-taking views.

We arrived at the ferry terminal early after leaving our hostel. I was coming down with a cold and admittedly wasn’t in the best of moods. Sprawled out across three seats, I slept for most of the ferry ride and before I knew it we had arrived at the Marina Piccola on the island of Capri. Departing the ferry, we were met with postcard views of mountains, greenery, and a sandy beach. We dipped our feet in the Mediterranean before taking another funicular to the town of Capri. After having a quick lunch of over-priced cheeseburgers, we decided to take a bus further up the steep island. I had read that the bus ride to Anacapri, the island’s other town, was filled with sharp turns and narrow roads, which made the experience quite harrowing.

The four of us crammed into a bus and were forced to stand, holding tightly onto both the hand-railings and each other. My girlfriend stood in front of me facing the window, while my friends stood to either side. The bus’s engine roared to life and started to zoom along the narrow streets, swerving up the mountain and regularly making 180o turns.

Being the smartass I am, I joked, “Are you guys harroweded yet?” They weren’t impressed.

At one point, the bus made yet another sharp turn and suddenly we seemed to be at the very edge of a cliff looking down to the marine port we had just left. From my girlfriend, I heard an audible gasp. I chuckled and asked her if she was scared.

She didn’t turn her head; her eyes stared across the mountains and ocean. My jaded girlfriend then said the one thing I did not expect. She whispered, “It’s just so beautiful.”

I looked over her shoulder and out the window and indeed it was beautiful. But my breathing remained consistent. She had had her breath literally taken away by this incredible view, but for the life of me I could not feel that same wonder. It was just one more view in a string of incredible views. Trying to understand it all, I looked down at her.

She was staring out the window. Her mouth, open because of her dropped jaw, was surrounded by her red pouty lips and her blue eyes, which often looked green or grey depending on the light, darted back and fourth across the scene before her. Her sun-freckled shoulders held up her black summer dress with pink polka dots, which was tied tight across her slender stomach. And as I looked at her in all her stunned appreciation and stunning beauty, I felt my heart skip a beat.

That’s when I learned to enjoy the view and it’s a lesson that we can all appreciate. Sometimes the view you have to take time to enjoy is from the top of a mountain. But sometimes, if you’re lucky, the only view you need is the view of the face of the person you wake up across from every morning.

1000 Words about Music by a Man who knows Nothing

As published on Retirement News Weekly/Niagara on July 23, 2010.

To start, I must tell you that I know nothing about music. While my friends are each knowledgeable about their genre of choice, ranging from 80’s rock to death metal, or have musical training on the piano or guitar or harmonica, I can boast none of these things. All I know is what I like, an eclectic mixture of acoustic guitar and pop hits, and what I don’t, mainly operas. So given the opportunity to attend the Opening Gala of Music Niagara, a festival that aims to showcase impressive Canadian classical and jazz talent, I seize the chance to be exposed to historically powerful music with only slight hesitation.

Before July 17 and this incredible night of music, I had only one question. What do I wear? I finally settle on a blue dress shirt and black pants before leaving my St. Catharine’s apartment and making my way to the beautiful Niagara-on-the-Lake. Driving down Byron Street, a narrow road at the edge of the town, I spot St. Mark’s Anglican Church with ease. Its grey granite-block exterior offers the illusion of a medieval castle, but the manicured lawns and neat stone pathway suggest more modern times. People are gathered in front of the church, collecting their tickets and having them ripped at the door. After collecting my ticket, I make my way through the small crowd and enter the church that dates back to the 1800s. It’s dimly lit by four chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and the smell is a mixture of expensive perfumes and colognes with the polite musk of an older church. It’s a comforting smell somehow.

The wearers of said perfumes and colognes are dressed to the nines in formal wear. Men are in suits and women are in dresses or conservative blouses. Looking around the room, I regret my decision not to wear a tie. Sitting in the very back of the church, in a seat I would later find out was set aside for volunteers, I take the aesthetics of the room in. The cream colored walls are framed by brown trimming and the dark stain-glass windows prevent any light from entering. The audience, finding their seat in pews atop complimentary square cushions, is a buzz with excitement. As 7:30 approaches, a sudden quiet falls on them.

After brief speeches and the mandatory thanks from organizers and select local political figures, pianist Andre Laplante enters from the back of the church with his head held high. The small ponytail that you would expect from such a man hangs behind his head. He politely introduces himself with a slight Quebec accent, explains a minor change in the night’s program, and then sits behind his piano and begins.

The music starts slow and builds and one can find beauty in the performance. The show is nothing more or less than a man and his piano. There are no special effects, no plot or visual stimulation of any sort, but there is beauty in the simplicity. The audience remains captivated. They sit in awe as Andre taps and pounds on the keys. In a day and age when it seems nothing so simple could keep our attention for more than thirty seconds, it’s wonderful to see that the marvel of music can still hold an audience in rapture.

And for the music, which I know nothing about, I can only describe it as I experienced it. Andre’s fingers race across the keys, building in speed and intensity. The sound becomes almost palpable in the room. It fills your ears, but more. It’s filling your head and mind, filling your body, filling your soul. It can make you feel insignificant, but fills you all the same. It brings you into the music, making you a part of the growing and crashing sound, making you part of the magic.

The church is suitable for such an experience. Not only was it designed with acoustics in mind, but the religious undertones of what is being performed do not escape me. It is, after all, almost a ritual for Andre, who has played the piece hundreds of times. At the same time, the tradition and ritual of the piece does not make it any less gripping. More so, with each precise key stroke, we are still witnessing the art of creation. As many times as it’s been played before, it is still the first here and now.

Wave after wave of Chopin’s Sonata in B flat minor opus 35 crashes over the audience. It is both assaulting and soothing at the same time; both joy and melancholy. At times the music startles, jumping from smooth melodies to jarred and sharp notes. Yet the audience is drawn in, longing to satisfy their urge to be a part of this creation. One man hums loudly with the music. The rest sit on seat’s edge and feel themselves being taken away.

When Andre finishes, he jumps from his seats and bows. The crowd erupts in applause, also jumping from their seats in a standing ovation. This is not an audience being polite. This is an audience being appreciative for the journey they were just taken on.

This is only intermission. The second half of the show is just as moving as the first with the addition of the Gould String Quartet. Violinists Atis Bankas, Tanya Charles, and Natasha Sharko with Luke Pomorski on cello add a new dimension to Andre’s piano. They appear almost like wooden puppets on strings dramatically bending at the elbow and bouncing in their high back seats with each powerful and graceful strum. At the end of the evening, the crowd erupts again, this time in a rush of murmurs followed immediately by applause.

Afterwards I talk about the experience with Terry Lett, one audience member and the official photographer of the festival. He proclaims his love for both the music and the quality of artists that Music Niagara brings to the region each year. If the Opening Gala is any measure I must agree. Knowing nothing about the music, it is still without doubt quality and beauty.