On Thu, 14 Feb 2013 01:56:55 -0500, micky
wrote:


Becaue of lower back pain, I need an MRI. I've done maybe 3 or 4
hours total of metal grinding in the last 30 years, and worn safety
glasses during most of it. Also, because of the direction the grind
stone spns, metal round off and stone that comes off t he grindstone
heads down towards my feet, not up to my face. The housing around
both of my grinders keeps other metal and stone dust from heading up
or towards me.

There are two chains of imaging clinics here and when I told one that
I had spent about 3 hours of the last 30 years grinding, they said,
"Don't worry about it. The restrictions** are for people who do it for
work, day in and day out."

For unrelated reasons I had to call the second chain and the second
one said, "Any grinding presents a risk. You need to have an orbital
X-ray, to check for metal in your eyes, before we can do the MRI.
And you need a prescription from your doctor before we can give the
orbital xray. We won't do the MRI otherwise."

So now I'm trying to decide if there is any risk in my backbround. I
used goggles most of the time, but not every time I repaired a
screwdriver. Because a bench grinder blows the stone and metal
particles down. Below my hands. The housing keeps stuff from
blowing up at my eyes.

Still on ohter occasions I've gotten wood in my eyes so maybe I've
gotten metal too. I've sawed some metal with a band saw, but that
discharges down also. I've used a hack saw quite a few times, but
grvidty makes the metal fall down, unless I was under the saw. If so,
I'm almost certailn I wore goggles. or at least safety glasses. (the
prohibition includes metal working also.)


The office manager said that if I had metal in my eye, as soon as I
entered the MRI room, I would feel it being pulled towards the magnet,
which is not an electro-magnet and is always "ON". That paper clips
can be pulled out of one's hands even when you are 3 feet away.

I was actually in the bed and for 3 seconds my head was in the
doughnut (the magnet or very neer the aagnet and had noticed nothing.
(Of course this was the original bore MRI and my nose was only an inch
from t he top and that's what I was concentrating on, once I noticed
it.

Do I need the x-ray of my eyes?



As an aside.told this story to my 75-year old friend, who used to own
a small
factory, and his father before him, and he remembered 50 years ago
getting some metal in his eye(maybe from something another employee
was doing) and having to go to the Wilmer Eye Clinic, which is still
here and well-known, and they had some special machine to take the
filing out of his eye.

I worked briefly in a machine shop and have been doing a lot of
grinding over the years. When I was younger I never wore eye
protection. Now that I'm older and realize I'm not invincible I do. I
was told to get an X-ray before getting an MRI. IMHO it is very
unlikely you have any metal in your eyes.. I had none in mine... BUT
there is no reason not to go get the X-ray first and then get the MRI.
It would be foolish to just hope for the best given the difficulty of
replacing an eyeball if you do happen to have a stray piece of metal
in there.