Nickel wrote:I find it very strange no one has picked up on the "standard MRI medicine" comment. What is this stuff? They didn't give me any "medicine that makes you lose consciousness" for my MRI, or the emergency helicopter ride that went with it. I find these comments to be the most suspicious.
Any one have some idea what he might be talking about? The only thing I can think is the doctors were so worried about him they induced a coma, but this seems incredibly unlikely given the seeming absence if any serious injury.
That's because I think it is horse manure what Fernando has said. Like yourself, I have been having emergency MRI's and CT scans and what not, I was administered methoxyflurane in my ambulance ride to hospital (I live in Victoria, Australia, that is the common analgesic inhaled through what is called the 'green whistle' here), then once at the hospital, both opiates morphine and oxycodone. These drugs are not used to induce unconsciousness, but manage pain, it just so happens that large amounts of them typically cause drowsiness, and at least in my case at that time, all I wanted to do was sleep. I expect that methoxyflurane was not administered to Fernando because it appears to only be in use here in Australia and New Zealand, and probably also because it appears to be quite toxic to both liver and kidneys (it probably helps that the only manufacturer of it in the world is here in Victoria as well, but I digress). So with that, I'm not sure what is standard practice for medical staff in Spain, but I can only assume that an opiate was administered, likely morphine. However I can't imagine the medical staff to be rushing to pin Fernando, in those circumstance best practice is sub-cutaneous injection, and they would have needed him out of the car to do that. So it is really difficult to say let alone guess what was used, but I would expect something was administered, for the purpose of pain management, an actual sedative to me seems like it would be avoided in those circumstances.
There can sometimes be a 'contrast medium' injected into the blood stream for an MRI, this is used so that vascular observations can be made (remember MRI is an acronym for Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and is the only think I can think of that is specifically used for that purpose. However, this is injected remotely DURING the MRI procedure, and more to the point, it doesn't induce sedation. Perhaps you have had the same experience Nickel, when I was injected the contrast medium, I had the immediate sensation that I was pissing my pants, which the technician warned me about (after the MRI was over I felt around my bollocks to check, but I was actually bone dry), but certainly not a sedative effect.
So for this reason I think Fernando is telling porky pies because there is no medication that is used to 'prime' a patient for an MRI, there is nothing that comes to my mind that would need to be administered well before and MRI. Keep in mind guys that it was likely Fernando was waiting for MRI facilities to become available at the hospital for an hour or so. There is no way that a contrast medium is being injected at a race track, when he is possibly hours away from the actual MRI. Of course it could just be ignorance, and lack of knowledge on the subject the reason that statement was made, but like I said, there is no drug that I know of that would be necessary to administer, an undefined amount of time before an MRI takes place.