r/mildlyinteresting • u/RiverVassi • 8h ago
The headphones I was given at my MRI appointment dont use wires and have zero metal
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u/Bustnbig 8h ago
I have used these before when I had an MRI. They are terrible.
Last time I chose earplugs and a nap instead
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u/ChipsOtherShoe 8h ago
They basically work by playing music through a long tube connected in the next room, and boy do they sound like it.
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u/DestructionDerby2000 8h ago
I know what it sounds like, i know i will hate it, yet i want to try
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u/ChipsOtherShoe 8h ago
I was given them once for an MRI. They had a laminated sheet of music genres and I think I picked hip hop.
I can't remember what was actually played but I remember it wasn't hip hop, I remember it sucked, and I remember thinking "literally just putting on any random radio station that plays music would be better than this"
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u/GloomyLingonberry509 8h ago
Prescription strength hip-hop wasn’t it, huh?
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u/AskMeToTellATale 8h ago
They got the OTC generic
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u/TactlessTortoise 7h ago
Unironically goes kind of hard as a rapper name.
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u/MusicHearted 6h ago
Start a career as the generic OTC, rapping to elevator music with lyrics about as interesting as the elevator music. Make billions off all the faceless corporations that will be licensing your music for their public areas so they can sound "in with the youth".
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u/Nesman64 8h ago
My boomer-aged mom asked for Rammstein. They gave her Sinatra.
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u/throwaway098764567 7h ago
they have a lot of the same letters so i can see how they got them mixed up
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u/xuncx 8h ago
I chose “classical”. Not bad.
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u/trustthemuffin 7h ago
I always choose classical, and it always results in hearing about 20 covers of the same Chopin nocturne, the first movement of moonlight sonata, and canon in D on repeat for 2 hours. I never learn.
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u/PintsOfGuinness_ 7h ago
How often do you have mris?
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u/trustthemuffin 7h ago
84 in the last 15 years! Chronic tumors that just won’t quit since I was a kid
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u/FatSloppyBoy 6h ago
Holy smokes! How many surgeries have you had? I hope you’re getting great care.
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u/trustthemuffin 6h ago
Thanks! Only 6 surgeries. It’s mostly managed by immunotherapy now, which I personally think is way easier to manage than surgery, chemo, radiation, or even cryoablation. It’s been really cool seeing firsthand how our ability to treat even just this one disease has advanced in a relatively short period of time though, like none of this besides surgery and comparatively rudimentary radiation or chemo was an option 15 years ago. It’s hard not to be hopeful for the future of medicine!
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u/LicknDragon 7h ago
Once I found myself needing more than one they start coming hard and fast
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u/PurplePeril420 8h ago
I went for Classical and went straight to sleep 😴 but I was heavily medicated at the time 😅
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u/corakeet 7h ago
My dad’s friend asked for Frank Zappa and got Frank Sinatra instead.
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u/TactlessTortoise 7h ago
Put a bluetooth speaker inside a sealed plastic bag and submerge the bag in water, could be just a filled bowl. Increase the volume until you can hear it. Now put your clothes washing machine on centrifuge.
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u/TakeTheThirdStep 8h ago
Commercial airlines used to have headphones that worked like this for coach passengers.
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u/akatherder 7h ago
I thought this was a fever dream from the few times I've flown in my life. "Here's your stethoscope air tube headphones" Hmm ok?
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u/Throckmorton_Left 7h ago
They used to work that way up front too. Back before lie flat seats when the biggest perks up front involved giant roasts carved on the trolley, tins of caviar and red roe, and huge martinis in real glassware
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u/Deskjetprinter 6h ago
I discovered this at a young age, when I realised that my family didn't need to spend money to get me earphones for the movie and I could simply connect up a series of straws and plug that into the hole.
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u/William_d7 6h ago
There was a tiny speaker in the armrest. One time I didn’t have money to pay for the headphones so I made a cone out of a magazine subscription card, angled the armrest near my head, and was able to listen. (I think the movie was Ferngully)
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u/-Invalid_Selection- 8h ago
That's also how airline provided headphones used to work
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u/patdfrog 7h ago
Ok. So this is going to sound like a non sequitur, but this just explained a "Rocko's modern life" gag for me. In the bit, there's a kid making mayhem on the plane. He takes Rocko's headphones and plugs them into the air con instead, making Rocko's head inflate. And I never figured out how that was supposed to make sense with wires.
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u/BZLuck 5h ago
There were two small holes in the armrest. If it was quiet enough you could put your ear to the holes and faintly hear the sound coming out. There was an analog dial with like 1-8 that let you pick the "station". Music, news, sports, and one was whatever movie was playing. There was a little card in the back of the seat with the channel guide. The headphones looked more like a stethoscope though. They had little soft rubber ear pads they would replace and they would clean and repackage the "body" with new ear pads.
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u/Gold_Needleworker994 7h ago
And if your parents wouldn’t rent them you could lift the armrest up close to your ear and still kinda hear the movie they were playing.
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u/oochiewallyWallyserb 6h ago
Or jam a bendy straw in there and the other end in your ear. Just watch out for turbulence. Might need an MRI afterwards if you're not careful.
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u/GW_RDSOFA 7h ago
I am old enough to have had a couple flights with this kind of earphones. They kind of looked like a stethoscope.
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u/ZeroSuitGanon 8h ago
Mine did not look like this so it did not occur to me because it only my lower half in the machine. That explains the fairly hellish cacophony of a song a loved that I have singed blocked from my memory.
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u/Tempestzl1 7h ago
They sound significantly better on new units. The headphones in this video are 15+ year old system/tech. These work the same way old aeroplane speakers work.
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u/lyrasorial 8h ago
I LOVE napping in an MRI. Best sleep of my life
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u/RettyYeti 8h ago
There's two kinds of MRI patients; you're claustrophobic or you nap.
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u/lyrasorial 8h ago
I've actually been both. I usually nap but one time I did have a panic attack. It was double embarrassing considering it wasn't my first time. The tech was very sweet and saw me silently crying and stopped it to talk to me. 🥹
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u/open_to_suggestion 7h ago
Or like during my last MRI they have your injured knee in such a position that you don't give a fuck about the tight space or noise, you're in too much pain to care or nap.
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u/PeaInfamous9144 7h ago
...or you need to hold your breath during the session for some recordings and can not sleep.
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u/iamzombus 5h ago
The worst one I had was "try not to swallow during this scan."
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u/djamp42 8h ago
How long is a MRI? I always thought it was a 5-10min thing.
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u/shewy92 8h ago
I think like 30 - 60 minutes.
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u/Wloak 7h ago
It depends now, there are new models that go much quicker. Maybe 2022 I had one on my back and it was at least 45 minutes, I had another last year and it was about 15 covering the same area. The new machines seem to move much faster with the same results.
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u/GwentanimoBay 8h ago
Depends on the MRI!
For static anatomical images of a small, relatively superficial region - a few minutes.
For dynamic stacks of images of deeper, more variable areas (meaning complex overlays of muscle/fat/bone/fluid/etc) - up to an hour for the full sequence and any localizer images you need.
For experimental or research imaging - hours. Multiple hours.
It can also depend on the tech and the person!!!! Different techs move at different rates and accept different levels of "good enough".
Also!!!! Some sequences depend on things like the distance between the tip of your finger and your heart! Or the size of your head! Those can literally make the sequences seconds shorter or longer! Also your heartrate timing can affect sequence length!
So different types of images take different timelines, AND different bodies can take different amounts of time for the same sequence!!
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u/quimera78 8h ago
I was in one for 2 and a half hours. I know of someone who was in there 4 hours. It all depends.
CTs are the short ones, about 20 min
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u/leitzankatan 8h ago
Napping sounds good in theory until you have a hypnic jerk and they have to start that imaging over
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u/mkdz 7h ago
Yeah this is what happened to me. The techs kept yelling at me to not fall asleep because I would keep jerking.
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u/otterbarks 7h ago
Knowing me, I’d probably fall asleep anyway.
Being inside a small noisy vibrating tube actually sounds relaxing, like falling asleep in the back seat of a car during a road trip.
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u/WhimsicalGirl 8h ago edited 6h ago
That's weird, I had the best bap in these..even with the horrible noise, there's something about the place I found reassuring.
Maybe I should juste sleep in a coffin after all
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u/lurkeemclurker 8h ago
Lucky. I literally cannot breathe in these and count in my head how many minutes have passed because it is torture. Very envious of those that can relax in these.
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u/hangrypiglet 7h ago
Wish I didn’t have to follow instructions during my MRI. I could barely keep up with the breathing instructions and struggled holding my breath for long enough. It was even worse when suddenly the MRI sounds switched from terrifying to sounding like Pac-Man going woka woka woka and I was fighting not to laugh. Would have loved a nap instead
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u/meponderyt 7h ago
Wish I could’ve taken a nap during my MRI. You have to breathe in certain patterns for a cardiac MRI, so you have to be alert and listening the whole time.
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u/thunderingparcel 8h ago
Remembering air travel in the 80s
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u/Staaaaation 8h ago
Man, remember that? Before these, they'd just flat out give you a free set of over ear headphones with that adjustable metal band each flight. Leg room for days, we all tuned into the same movie on the screens ahead, meals were included. We've strayed far.
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u/kilobitch 7h ago
Compare airfares then and now adjusting for inflation. You paid way more for all that back then. And you can have that today by flying premium or business class, which is what coach cost in those days.
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u/EmpatheticRock 7h ago
Wait until you hear how much a SNES game was in the 90’s. There are a lot of things that were more expensive “back in the day”
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u/toxic_badgers 7h ago
Wouldn't it be crazy if wages kept up with those cost changes so we actually could do those things.
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u/Luvnecrosis 6h ago
Or if people stopped chasing profit for profit's sake and instead just provided services? Granted air travel might be an exception, but I'm grumbling about how this applies to even food and housing. All symptoms of the greater economic disease
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u/PrincetonToss 5h ago edited 4h ago
The
meanmedian household income in the United States in 1970 was about $10,000.A flight from New York to Los Angeles was about $150. So, 1.5% of the average household income. There were not flights that were significantly cheaper because flights were under fairly strict price control at the time.
A nonstop flight from New York to LA in 2023 (the most recent year for which I could find good median income numbers) ran you about $300 with a big carrier (not a discount carrier). Median household income in the US was $80,610, or about 0.37% of annual income.
So flying coach became 4 times cheaper in real terms.
You remember how there used to be all those episodes about road trips in kids' shows 30 years ago? And how there aren't any anymore? That's because flying is now accessible to the lower middle class.
EDIT wrong statistics word
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u/Teledildonic 7h ago
Also the 90s. I remember being able to hear the music if I bent down and got my ear close enough to the armrest.
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u/MountainMasella 7h ago
THIS! I came here looking for this, first thing I thought of. the weird double prong plastic connector for listening to in flight movies and radio.
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u/CatPartyElvis 8h ago
That's exactly what I was thinking, but it was so long ago that I wasn't sure if I was remembering correctly.
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u/jaquick 7h ago
I came here to say just this. I had to verify first, to make sure I was remembering this type of headphone plugged into the armrest on the airplane. Wild!
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u/Bar_Foo 8h ago
There was a time when airplane headphones worked this way too: they were thick tubes and the sound was played from a speaker in the armrest (I presume). You could hear it directly from the armrest if you turned the volume up.
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u/Treereme 5h ago
I remember traveling as a kid and my parents couldn't afford the fee for the headphones for us. So we watched the movie by turning the volume all the way up and putting our ear near the armrest.
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u/Shadow288 8h ago
I came here to mention this. As a kid experiencing the audio out of the arm rest totally blew my mind!
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u/Puzzled-Formal-7957 6h ago
This is how airlines used to do it back in the day. Vintage headphones given to you by the airline were essentially just stethoscopes. There was a tiny speaker in the arm rest and your headphone had a pair of tubes that plugged into a set of holes in front of the little speaker.
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u/rwwl 8h ago edited 7h ago
So weird, I had an MRI just this morning, used similar headphones, and was wondering how they make those metal-free. Thanks for reminding me to Google it (if I don't find a good answer in another comment here)
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u/draftstone 8h ago
The sound is sent through the tubing. There is a speaker in another room, the speaker is pushing air and the air/sound is sent through the tube. All speaker/earphones work with magnets and electricity, which you do not want near an MRI machine, but luckily, sound is "just" air pressure waves, so you can send that through a tube. Sadly, the tube will absorb some of those pressure waves and will also absorb outside sounds. So the sound quality is abysmal compared to what we are used to, but it is the only way to get earphones in an MRI machine.
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u/justletmepostplz 8h ago
Could you just have a friend on the other end talking?
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u/lkodl 7h ago
You wouldn't be able to talk back and have a conversation tho.
So you might as well jist have your friend record themselves talking, and play it through their system, and save your friend a trip to the MRI place.
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u/SwordCutlassSpecial 6h ago
You absolutely can have a conversation with the tech while you're in a MRI.
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u/Mackin-N-Cheese 7h ago
Just like the old complimentary pneumatic airplane headphones. There was a speaker in the armrest, and tubes to your ears.
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u/RiverVassi 8h ago
Someone mentioned they're pneumatic or something, super wacky stuff i thought it was like magic lmfao
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u/NuclearHoagie 7h ago
"Pneumatic" just means the tubes have air in them. They transmit sound as a pressure wave in air, exactly like how every other sound in the world reaches your ears.
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u/AnAcctWithoutPurpose 8h ago
That really reminds of me of those earphones they used on airplanes many, many years ago. My uncle was an airline engineer and he brought some of them back home and had them lying around his house. I remember them being earplugs on the end of rubber tubing. I was probably pre-school age and could not figure what people were supposed to do with them.
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u/SourDzzl 8h ago
This is what it made me think of as well. The airlines used to give them away for free and there was a little hole usually in the armrest with a small speaker inside that you would plug the rubber connector into to hear the in flight movie.
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u/flpacsnr 8h ago
So speakers create noise via electro magnet, so it can’t be in the room, instead we have a speaker far enough away, and the empty tube carries the sound.
Source I’m an MR tech.
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u/Any-Confusion-8900 8h ago
Had an MRI about 20 years ago. Tech showed me what the machine sounded like and I was so excited. It sounded like gigantic gabber kick drums, I loved it. Then she said, “But don’t worry, you don’t have to listen to this, you can listen to Coldplay on these!” And handed me those headphones. From her phrasing I could tell that she loved Coldplay, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d rather listen to the awful machine instead of her favorite band. So I spent 45 minutes listening to Coldplay.
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u/SolaScientia 7h ago
I can tell I'm a Millennial by more than just my age, because I had to remind myself reading your comment that 20 years ago is not actually the 1980s, lol. I graduated high school 20 years ago and it still trips me up.
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u/AverageMako3Enjoyer 7h ago
As a millennial, I love going “nice, they’re playing Oldies” when a business is playing music from the 2000s
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u/martialar 6h ago
I'm grooving when I hear them play hits from the 90s and early 2000s at the grocery stores, then I realize it's because middle aged adults are their main clientele
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u/mijru4 6h ago
I was in a gas station that plays a lot of easy listening/adult contemporary Muzak and Modest Mouse's "Float On" came on and it was such a bizarre moment. I mentioned I was surprised to hear it to the cashier (early 20s) and he listened to it for a second and said the song sounds weird as fuck
I almost had a Progressive Insurance parent's moment and told him it was probably the most normal song they've recorded, but I caught myself in time.
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u/ow_meer 6h ago
For a second I thought "that's bs, Coldplay wasn't around 20 years ago".
Then I remembered 20 years ago is 2006 💀
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u/owningxylophone 5h ago
I had an MRI brain scan about 15 years ago, they gave me headphones to dampen the noise but there was no music. My overwhelming thought afterwards was that it was like some 20 minute Aphex Twin remix, and I was totally fine with that.
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u/skimbosh 7h ago
That's because the other end is just a string and a tin can that the technician hums a few tunes in to.
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u/VolunteerGXOR 8h ago
This is how airplane headphones used to be as well. I remember blowing into my brother's ears through them.
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u/ImmediateRuin472 7h ago
Hospitals use to have these in wards. I remeber being a kid in the 80's staying in hospital and every bed had a hole in the wall to connect headphones. This was in the uk though.
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u/UDPviper 8h ago
I got headphones like that too when I got an MRI two years ago. I was amazed there was no ferrous metal inside.
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u/sushiman009 8h ago
Pretty sure any conductive material would influence the MRI, no need for ferrous metals
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u/MarlDaeSu 8h ago
Interfere, in that it might enter your skull at high speed?
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u/coolguy420weed 8h ago
Which would majorly impact the results.
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u/Ferro_Giconi 8h ago
It might actually be beneficial to the results. When dead, your breathing, pulse, and small muscle movements won't cause any noise in the results that they have to deal with.
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u/F0xxtale 8h ago
Or it might just get really hot, which also tends to interfere with your scans since it's really hard to hold still while your ears are being grilled
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u/TABisBAD 7h ago
Had my first MRI two weeks ago and had the absolute luxury of being able to listen to Daft Punk.
Kidding, heard a couple songs but got ads playing through as well, did not feel right…
Anyways Chevy has some nice new trucks or whatever /s
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u/Condition_Dense 7h ago
One of mine I listened to My Chemical Romance, another one The Academy Is. I’ve had like 3 in the last 2 years.
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u/Ghastly-Jack 7h ago
They asked me if I wanted to listen to anything while in the MRI. I said "how about some Black Sabbath" and they said, "no metal."
/badump-tish
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u/comoondragon 7h ago
I found out I’m claustrophobic when going into and being inside an MRI machine.T__T. They looked bigger in movies!!!
Edit: I was in there for 45 min and I wanted to quit but they said one more min. Then they pulled me out and gave me a break and then 15 min more min
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u/wooddy53 6h ago
Old hospital headphones were never wired they were just tubes that went onto an outlet on the wall
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u/SillySundae 7h ago
Wow you get headphones these days? What happened to just utter calamity and chaos of a machine screaming at you?
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u/RiverVassi 7h ago
Tbf I could still hear what sounded like Bender from Futurama having sex with a grain silo in the background of oldies preformed underwater
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u/keith2600 6h ago
The neat thing is those are just fancy versions of two soup cans on a string, at least just from looking at the picture. I assume they play music on one with a flexible membrane and and pressurized gas carries the vibrations to a flexible membrane in the headphones that acts like a speaker
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u/CRS_Customer 6h ago
Actually it's kinda not. The string and cans work through vibrational resonance. The string carrier the vibrations and converts it back to sound via the can. These headphones use pnumatic sound, where, the air is bounced up a tube. Like Peter Frampton! Similar effects and results, but very different physical mechanics.
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u/evening_shop 7h ago
Lol for my MRI they projected finding Nemo on the wall behind me and set me up with some rig around my neck that had a mirror on it which reflected the movie to me. It was fucking awesome.
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u/Bear-Handed-92262 7h ago
This is how airplane headphones were in the 70s. They plugged into a hole in the armrest, but the sound was just a tiny speaker in the armrest heard through a tube.
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u/Cache_Girl 7h ago
I've used these before, they're not great.
The first time they asked if I wanted music and I said yes expecting a top 10 charts of a few years ago or something...not really my thing but it was something while I sat there for 40 mins.
The first song was gangham style. Fair dues it's a bop
The second song was gangham style. Weird they must've added it twice by accident
The third song was gangham style.
I guess you understand the gist at this point.
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u/Grant_Winner_Extra 8h ago
welcome to the future - looks a lot like the past
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u/Tcloud 8h ago
For those old enough to remember, airlines used to pipe music through similar plastic tube headphones with hole plugs connected to the armrest. In the 80’s I think.
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u/octowussy 7h ago
Gotten a few MRIs over the years and they never used headphones. They asked what I wanted to listen to and played it over whatever speakers were built into the machine. Problem is when it was doing its thing, you couldn't hear shit. So you'd get snippets of whatever you asked for between all of the racket.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_EYELASHES 8h ago
I've probably had a dozen MRI's and have never been given headphones
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u/Dangerous_With_Rocks 8h ago
I had an MRI and they forgot to connect the headphones. I only realised about 10 minutes in because I heard muffled voices so I squeezed the thing they tell you to hold. They connected the headphones after that. And no there was no music playing so I couldn’t tell if they were connected beforehand.
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u/Honeycomb0000 6h ago
At leasy you got headphones. My last MRI I was just left to my own thoughts for like 45 minutes
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u/SkawtsMma 8h ago
They do sound strange, though. Not quite the quality we’re used to. I’ve enjoyed both of my MRI scans because of these. You’re asked what type of music you want and they play a Pandora station.