My son-in-law is a ex-footballer… having played Canadian-style football in one of those men’s house leagues for the guys who could never dedicate their lives to the game, but still had enough talent to make the provincial all-stars, or something similar. (Sidebar: the son-in-law used to play with one of the members of Kevin Martin’s gold medal winning curling squad, who was the backup quarterback on their team!) As such, he had his fair share of injuries. One of them, the ubiquitous knee injury, has come back to haunt him. He recently had a MRI to work out the final diagnosis and build out a treatment strategy.

We got to babysit the granddaughter while they were at the diagnostic imaging unit. And, as the lad was leaving for the hospital, I made a pointed effort to impress on him the importance of filling out the questionnaire completely, and answering all questions honestly and completely.

And it is a good thing that he followed my advice.

When asked if he had ever had metal in his eyes, he thought about it, and replied that he had a bit of a ‘challenge’ at his part time job a couple of years ago that resulted in a metal sliver in his eye, which he self-extracted. (Young guys and their ‘indestructible‘ attitudes; no safety glasses)

The radiology techs delayed the MRI and immediately did a medial head x-ray, and thought they saw ‘something’. They then did a complete radial series (you know: the one where the machine head tracks from a point in line with your nose all the way around to the same point at the back of your head).

They discovered that the lad has a piece of metal lodged in his orbital socket. And, of course, it needs to come out.

It’s a darned good thing that a) he told the whole truth, and b) that the MRI that was needed was only on his knee.