Heavy Metal

You may remember a few weeks ago, I wrote about needing an MRI and the surgeon asking me if I had any metal in my body. I ran through a mental catalogue, at which point, after having made a detour into a delightful reverie about becoming a human forklift, I determined that I was metal-free. I had carefully considered the surgeries I’d had over the years, and I assumed if a surgeon had left any metal in me, I would know it by now and therefore could enter the MRI tunnel without any worries.

I was WRONG. I am FULL OF METAL.

And how did I arrive at this horrifying conclusion? Well, I recently had an abdominal X-ray for another, completely unrelated matter, and on Thursday, I was able to access the report through the radiology clinic dashboard. It was pretty humdrum, and I was getting more than a little miffed once again at the liberal use of the term “unremarkable” (although I was pleased to note that my lungs are apparently “well-aerated”) when it said this: Cholecystectomy clips noted. I was like “What the f*ck is a chole-thingy?” so I googled it, and it’s when you have your gall bladder removed, and I did that about 15 years ago. I realize I’ve just made it sound like I reached into my own abdominal cavity and pulled it out myself, and if that did indeed happen, you will note that I would have accompanied the pulling out of my gall bladder with a flourish and the words Abracadabra, but a surgeon did it, and he was a terrible magician. And I KNOW this because in the same way that a terrible magician would accidentally sit on the top hat and kill his rabbit, this person left METAL CLIPS inside my body. I’ve been setting off the airport security alarms for years and telling them it was MY BELT when, in fact, I am a human IED.

These are my insides

According to my research, there are different kinds of clips for this—some dissolve and some are permanent, but the issue is that no one even asked me if I wanted to become a cyborg, and normally I would have said YES, but in this case, there’s no upside—I mean, it’s nothing AT ALL like having forklift arms, and I was initially very upset (not to mention worried that the MRI maybe dislodged them, and now I was being slowly stabbed to death from the inside), but then we went to see the new Suicide Squad movie. There was a variety of new characters, including a guy called Polka Dot Man, who could shoot polka dots out of his body and eviscerate people with them. Polka dots are a stupid weapon, but you know what’s not? METAL CLIPS. So now I’m going to write to James Gunn and suggest that, for the Suicide Squad sequel, there should be a new character introduced. Her name is Heavy Metal and her superpower is shooting sharp pieces of steel out of her body:

Criminal: Who the hell are you?!
Heavy Metal: My name is Heavy Metal, loser.
Criminal: You look rather unremarkable to me.
Heavy Metal: Prepare to die.

38 thoughts on “Heavy Metal”

  5. Oh no! What a cautionary tale this is–always maybe assume that you might have metal in your body if asked during a physical examination? Wow! Keep us posted on your Suicide Squad character–love it!

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  7. “Steelon Flux” — we do have a fair amount of iron and carbon in our bodies. If you had an internal blast furnace to melt blood alone, it could theoretically form high carbon steel pellets. Projecting them would require a gas, probably methane, and an orifice from which to propel them…

    A massive, spinning magnetic doughnut, yanking the clipped ends of your bile ducts around like a wobbling child’s top, I don’t know, maybe its a way to shred and shed unwanted internal deposits of lipids. I won’t say another word, decorum you know.

    I’ve got 4 stents around my heart now — I wonder if they’re impacted by high-energy magnets?

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  9. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that as a kid I regularly stayed up late and watched the stylings of a British gentleman named Benny Hill. And I’d forgotten, until now, that he did a lengthy sketch called “Bionic Baby” about the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman having a child who has bright red hair even though neither of his parents do, and they conclude it’s because of rust from their metal parts.
    I have no idea where I was going with that except that you never know what other side effects metal in your body might have, and also while Polka Dot Man is a terrible superhero the actor who plays him seems to be a decent guy and there are a lot of fun stories about how he adopted a cat on the movie set. Adopting animals is a pretty good superpower.

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  12. I think Heavy Metal would be a great super antihero! Because that’s what the Suicide Squad really is. So now that you’ve seen the film, I was very disappointed with his version. I mean (spoilers here) a giant star fish, A STAR FISH!?!? Ugh, so stupid, and yes I agree that polka dots are a dumb super power. But Heavy Metal sounds like she’d be a hard ass, “a don’t mess with me or you’ll get a mouth full of shrapnel” kinda gal.

    Now I’m wondering if I don’t have metal in my body, I’m going to have to ask my doctor, but since I’ve only had one surgery in my entire life the odds are small, but one never knows.

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  18. I admire you for keeping your sense of humour after such a discovery. I don’t think I’d take this news quite as well. I was reading about medical mistakes the other day – not need to go into details – and here you are with yet another instance of it.

    You totally deserve your own Suicide Squad character.

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