My EMG-NCV

Today I had my EMG-NCV test. I think I flunked it. Them. Ouch.

Define EMG-NCV - Electro-myo-graph and Nerve Conduction Velocity. Here is a good explanation of the two procedures.

It hurt like hell. In the middle of the tests, I was lying in a sweaty heap and crying. Not a pretty picture, huh. Sweating comes easily to me. Fortunately. But not excessively, OK? But when I'm tortured, like today, I can cry pretty easily too. That's how my body reacts to intense pain. The good thing for me is that I knew the torture was going to end, and if it got too intense, I knew that I could stop the tests and that would be that.

Now, I would not want to steer anyone away from such tests if they could help you, but they hurt like hell.

Q: Does an EMG hurt?

A: Yes. (mu-hahahaha!)

I showed up for a "EMG-NCV Bilateral Lower Extremities." The slender, young female doctor was startlingly attractive. She strode confidently into the room where I waited in my surgical gown. Her full lips parted slightly as our eyes met and she placed her tiny hand in mine in greeting. My gown fell open and I placed her hand on my.....uh.....Oops, wrong audience.

I did have to shed the pants and don one of those surgical gowns that opens in the back. But I figured that, even as hot as she was, I was not going to have to worry about getting a woodie, because I knew I was about to suffer some fresh kinds of pain. Pain, for me at least, tends to, uh, diminish my sexual urges. Your mileage may vary.

She performed the NCV (aka "torture" loosely defined) test first, which means they run an electrical current through your body, via two Nazi-era-inspired "pain pads" hooked up to the generator. I mean, hey baby, amp that mother up and you've got one nasty pain machine there. She was jerking me around with between 100 and 500 milli-amps, and she could have gone much, much higher. This sexy doctor wasn't looking so sexy anymore. Was that a brownshirt she was wearing?

She jolted me about 100 times per leg. Most of them were not so bad, but some of those areas, like under the knee or between the ankle and the heel...already tender there. Ouch. Major fucking ouch. And when she'd crank it up....yee-ow.

Imagine that thing hooked up to your testicles. Or your nipples. Oh my omniscient cloud-being!

Finally she was finished with all the shocking details. Now it was time to move on to the NEEDLES portion of our funhouse.

For the EMG, she placed very sharp needles in several muscles on my legs and feet, one at a time. Felt like getting a shot. Everyone likes getting a shot, right? I couldn't bear to watch all this. I diverted my eyes to the ceiling for both tests, to the wall, the computer, especially when the needles were going into my body.

Besides sweating and crying easily, I get a pretty intense vasovagal reaction to needles being jabbed into my body, especially when they're withdrawing blood. I get that cold flush thru my body and, if I were to stand up rather quickly, would most likely faint. It was a good thing I didn't go into medicine.

I couldn't see them, but those needles had wires running from them into the computer. We were also wired for sound. She would insert the needle and a sound would be produced. Then she'd "wiggle" the needle around a bit, producing different sounds. She directed me to relax and flex the muscle, producing quite different sounds. I think she stabbed me five times per leg, and we went thru the cycle of relaxing and flexing the muscles.

I suppose that some slightly demented artist might take this technology and produce music (of a sort) by flexing and relaxing his own muscles. A veritable symphony. In fact, I'm sure someone has already done it. Some performance artist like Laurie Anderson perhaps. Or even stranger.

So now I have a baseline, at least. Maybe I'll take this test again in five or ten years (not likely!) and we can compare it to the 2007 results. And speaking of results, I go to talk them over with myMD next Monday.