WARNING about MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) after surgery.
I had my gastric bypass surgery in Oct. 2001. I just recently had an MRI (magnetic resonace imaging) I had an MRI back in 1998 also. This time while I was having the procedure done...I became quite nauseated and felt a "weird" sensation on the left side of my body. I told her to stop the procedure because I was feeling absolutely sick...as if I were going to throw up, she stopped the procedure and came in to talk to me about how I was feeling...I said it was hard to explain, but something just didn't feel right, we waited a few minutes and the strange feeling went away, so I told her to go ahead and try again. The procedure started again, and after a few minutes I started feeling awful again, hard to explain how I was feeling, but something just was not right. I had been having severe back pains for months, so this is why I was having an MRI...even though I was feeling awful, I told her to continue with the MRI because I wanted to find out what was wrong with my back. After about 15 minutes...I felt something hot on the inside of my body...again on the left side....I tried to ignore it...but it got worse, so I told her to turn the MRI off...because I felt something hot inside, like something was burning....she came out...touched my skin, asked my where it was burning...and I pointed to an area, just under my breast on the left side...she said..well, I don't see anything...and asked me if I wanted to contine...I was starting to feel like a basic case....and psychologically talked myself into thinking I must have been imagining it...and continued to talk myself into continuing with the procedure for the next 1/2hr. To try and make a long story short...by the time I was done with the entire procedure, I was feeling so awful, that they sent me to the emergency room, did a bunch of tests and determined that the staples in my stomach from the gastric bypass...had been tugged at from the MRI machine and the MRI machine had actually heated the staples and that was what was causing the "fire" pain I was having! Has anyone ever heard of such a thing? I had told them about my surgery...and they said it was fine to go ahead with the MRI....I just want to warn everyone that this could possibly happen to them...and if ever you need to have an MRI..please be warned that this could happen and can be very uncomfortable. Also, since this time, I have noticed that my stomach is very bubbly....(burping and full sensation most of the time).
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