That last post was heavy, this is less so:
My MRI was totally relaxing. They gave me a selection of CDs to listen to for the half hour I was in the tube. I picked coldplay.
There were signs up all over the hospital indicating that patients own their own medical information, and that we could request a CD with our imaging results. So I did … and it took them about three minutes to burn a CD for me. I got home, opened the envelope, and I have two CDs … one with x-rays from yesterday .. and the other with MRI data from today.
Here’s the best part: I got the raw DICOM data … which is the standard by which medical imaging types toss around full resolution medical data. I downloaded OSIRIX, which is a free and open source DICOM viewer … and now I’m busily scaling intensities up and down on these 6.5MB images of my knees.
Of course, it was a total buzzkill when I opened up the “metadata” portion of the files and found my social security number in there. Bummer! Of course, they do have a “confidential” sticker on the envelope … I guess that’s par for the course.
Now, if only I knew what any of this crap meant!
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