Some people get MBAs. Or MSWs. Or Mrs.'s.

I just got an MRI. And I have the MRI hair to prove it.

My choking-cigarette-smoke olfactory hallucinations are now in their sixth straight sold-out week, so my neurologist ordered an MRI to see if I might be experiencing seizures. And since I was a bit overdue for my every-other-year MRI to monitor a benign adenoma tumor on my pituitary, my GP ordered one for that as well.

For those of you keeping score at home, that's two MRIs for the price of one Richter-scale bedhead.

And hoo-boy has the MRI spa experience improved in the last two years. Instead of being immobilized in a claustrophobic head cage and jammed full-body into the super-duper-claustrophobic MRI oven that clanks and screams at you like you're about to be devoured by robot ghosts, this time I was given noise-almost-canceling headphones with my choice of music (they cruelly didn't have a Broadway option, which is just rude) under my claustrophobic head cage and I was rolled into the oven only to my shoulders, which allowed a welcome sense of light and air circulation.

Side note: The top of the oven hole that I was rolled into was made of pale plastic molded with two ridged arcs that curved in from the sides and swooped down to meet in the middle and disappear at the bottom. And when you stare at them for over an hour as terrifying robot ghosts clank and scream in your ears, they start to look like ... well ... um ... a hoo-hoo. And once you see an abstract hoo-hoo arcing gracefully mere inches from your face, you totally can't UNsee it. So it's fair to say that I've had more than my fair share of molded abstract hoo-hoo for the day. Or the week. Or the decade.

When the guy who locked me in the claustrophobic head cage and rolled me into the MRI clanking-and-screaming-robot-ghost oven told me that Broadway wasn't an option for my musical distractions, I—in a pique of fluster—blurted out the obvious second choice for a Broadway lover: '70s rock. I have NO idea why I said that, other than the fact that I like The Eagles and "Little Willy" (the SONG, ya perverts), but the genre's stentorian guitar shredding and growled, node-guaranteeing singing ended up making an arguably better robot-ghost-clanking-and-screaming cover-up than "She Used to be Mine" or "Finishing the Hat."

Side note: When you're immobilized in a cage with a molded abstract hoo-hoo glaring in your face and an endless parade of '70s rock anthems you've never heard before blaring in your ears, you have to think of SOMETHING to pass the time. So you inevitably find yourself listening intently and trying to catalog the form and structure of each song.

Cliff's Notes: The '70s were clearly a period of unbridled musical creativity and innovation, because not a single song is written in AABA form. Not even "Old Time Rock and Roll," despite its UNAMBIGUOUSLY STATED allegiance to the AABA Golden Age. Thanks for nothing, Bob Deceiveger.

Medical-stuff conclusion: There is a measurably common—though not necessarily causal—relationship between mental illness and pituitary tumors. Which is one reason we monitor my adenoma every two years with an MRI to see if it's growing or in any way changing. There is also an objectively cruel relationship between my bipolar-meds-induced tardive dyskenesia—a permanent neurological disorder that causes LOTS of involuntary muscle movement—and my regular MRIs that require me to LIE THE FUCK STILL FOR OVER AN HOUR and hold all that twitching in. It's exhausting, which is why I always take a PTO day to recover when I have an MRI.

And to tame my damn bedhead.