That Is Not What She Said

For today’s story, and also one coming up shortly, I want to talk about something very important: coils.

Ok, so I admit they’re probably not “very important” to you. But, since that won’t stop me from talking about them, I figure it would probably be helpful for the Dear Reader to know a little background information about my “other job.” Don’t worry, I’ll keep the irrelevant info to a minimum and try not to nerd out on you too much…

As some of you may know, I have had a career in science, namely in the field of MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). I have had the pleasure of imaging both humans and rodents, and in both cases, a critical part of the experiment is the coil.

The coil is essentially a small radio antenna shaped to fit around whatever you want to image, be it an arm, a body, or in my experience, a brain-containing head. Then the coil and your body part together go in the hole (ake “bore”) of the giant magnet. It is the coil that then detects all the fun science-y stuff happening inside our object of interest, and sends that information to a computer to be magically mathemat-ized into an actual image.

Really, though the main thing you need to know is that it is a very important part of my job, and that it fits inside the Really Big Magnet.

Tale 1: That’s Not What She Said

Recently I was working with Boss Lady #2¹Not to be confused with The Boss Lady, with whom I have conjugal relations–this is my current supervisor when I do decide to show up for my other job. learning how to image live mice. Previously, I had only worked with mice that were no longer with us in spirit.

We had thought that we had all the knobs and dials set just right, and were about 30 minutes into our 40 minute experiment when she had noticed the mouse, though safely and humanely sedated, had moved some in the coil.

There was a pretty good chance that the change in position would make our data up to that point worthless, so we needed to decide whether or not to go the full 40 minutes.

She turned to me and asked, “Should we pull it out before it’s finished?”

To which any fan of Michael Scott from NBC’s hit sitcom, The Office, would have indubitably automatically replied:

That’s what she said!

The office Fan with little to no self-control

And 9 times out of 10, that’s what this Office aficionado and lazy humorist would have blurted out.

But, being the professional that I am, I instead leaned into my vast knowledge of the Latin language. With a smirk on my face, I commented under my breath:²Actually, according to my text messages with the real Boss Lady documenting this event, I quipped, “The Latin term for that is ‘Coilus interruptus, I believe.”

Ah, a classic case of Coilus Interruptus…

A Junior High boy stuck in a PhD’s Body, Somehow simultaneously making the most high-brow and the most low-brow MRI Joke ever told.

(In case you need a little help³This might help explain the joke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coitus_interruptus…)

Content created on: 26 February 2020 (Wednesday)

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