Lab rat

It reminded me of the back room of casinos where people are taken when casino bosses cut off their debtors' fingers and beat them.  Ducting showed below the ceiling.  Lights dangled from the ceiling on poles. The plastic on the machines used were of the old beige variety of the 1960s and 70s.  Wires snaked along the floor everywhere like the ones from the 1990s connecting electrical guitars to speakers strung across a concert stage.  I was on the table.

First they had to map the nerves down the side of my knee by using electrical shocks.  Supposedly, I was not to have felt the shock.  But, a number of the buzzes sent my leg to shivering vigorously.  Then, they went in with very thin needles to areas that had been mapped in order to find a nerve root in the subcutaceous region.  Now, that was electrifying.  I was supposed to call out when I felt a sensation with one of three terms - local (meaning the pain was felt where the needle was stinging), sharp pain (yep, the shock felt the entire length of my leg), and twitch.  That was the term they wanted to hear so that they could stop and hear the brain's signals to the nerve.  Strong signals would mean there was too much pressure in the vein along which the nerve root was located.  Normal signals would indicate normal pressure.

This went on for one hour.  Mostly I used the word local, but a good number of times I felt the sharp pain from the shock down the length of my leg.  Only once in a blue moon did I say twitch.  The net result was that the doctor couldn't find enough nerves that told her that there was pressure being affected.  Other "noise" interfered with the signals because the muscle wan't relaxed enough.  Imagine that.  Pain locally and sharp pain down the length of my leg for the better part of an hour, and the doctor thought I wasn't relaxed enough for her to hear the signals clearly from the nerve root.  I kept telling myself that this was experimental after all, but this was really on the inexact science side of things.  The doctor told me she wouldn't continue after an hour - good news.  Oh, but that was followed by, "Schedule another appointment and we'll try in the other leg."  Now that was comforting.