This, for reference:
You take the snap and fake a handoff right and then you pivot left, and the guard and tackle clear the way and you are, for a moment, free. There is a linebacker bearing down. You feint; he is not fooled. He hits you at the knee and you go down. There is a twinge.
Forty years of shoe leather later, in search of the perfect story, you put a foot wrong and your knee gives out and down you nearly go again. Pain is not the problem. It is the buckling of the knee that causes worry.
If there is a history of arthritis in your family on both sides, and if your old ma has had four – count 'em, four – knee replacements, thanks to the surgeons in Northern Ontario, then your worries are compounded.
You will see a doctor. He used to be a baseball player. He is familiar with the problems of the knee. He orders X-rays of both knees and he sends you to a younger doctor.
The younger doctor will look at your X-rays when he will be interrupted by a phone call. "No. I can't say for sure. No. He can't travel with the team."
You ask who called. He won't say. But if he says someone cannot take the road trip with the team, then you figure the team trusts him, and any doctor trusted by the team is fine with you.
He looks at your film again. He is surprised that the left knee is the problem. He thinks the right knee is worse. You tell him, that may be, but it's the left one that buckles. He sends you for an MRI.
Your MRI will take place in a hospital at night. You will be asked if there is shrapnel, or if there are bullets, in your body. Good question: The M in MRI stands for Magnetic. The modern world is full of war, and the wounded walk in our midst; nobody wants old bullets sucked out of his flesh by the force of magnets.
In the waiting room you notice a young man in a skinny suit with slick hair. He carries a paper cup of coffee as if it were his mother's milk. No shrapnel, you guess, in him. He is summoned. You read your book. And then you are called, and this is what is important:
You know those open-at-the-back hospital gowns? I wore one. However, it occurred to me as I struggled to remain modest that everyone else was wearing two gowns – one open at the front, and the other open at the back. To remain covered, you should wear two gowns.
No one told me.
You're welcome.
For your further information, an MRI machine is a long and hollow tube in which you lie like the pig in the blanket. Your knee will be clamped in place. An attendant will give you earplugs and tell you not to move your knee.
You will be glad for the earplugs because an MRI machine makes very loud noises – "dugga dugga dugga" very fast, and at the same time, very slowly, it makes another noise: "Pock. Pock. Pock." I counted 842 "duggas" during one screening. There were many screenings over the course of 20 minutes.
When it is over, your knee will be hot. You, curious, will ask the attendant how the machine works. He will say there are hydrogen molecules in your body and they send a signal to a coil in the machine.
You still won't know. But you will be grateful for the tip about the gowns.
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