You're taping what to my foot? Ramblings from a first-time MRI

I had a lot of surprises in store for my first ever MRI today, but the biggest surprise was the Vitamin E pill the assistant taped to the bottom of my foot to mark the place where I feel the most pain. Apparently, it helps the radiologist know where to look when reading the MRI without messing up the reading. Seriously?

I never went to med school, but I'd like to think that a doctor could read the MRI of my foot without needing a pointer in the form of a pill taped to my foot to identify the problem area. It also made me wonder if they could miss other problem areas -- there was no vitamin E taped to the spot of second-most pain, but what if that's the real source of my pain?

Being nervous about something so new and strange, I did a bit of browsing online yesterday. My only experience with MRIs before yesterday's reading was with the TV show "House." If you watch the show, you know that dreadful things typically happen to the patient in the MRI machine. Convulsions, seizures, heart attacks, hallucinations. I figured nothing that dramatic would happen to me, but I still wanted to know what to expect in a real-world MRI.

There are some really good children's hospital videos about MRIs online -- I highly recommend them for your first MRI -- whether you're a kid or not. So I thought I was pretty calm driving to my appointment. One of the comments online said to imagine yourself as the Dalai Lama getting an MRI. Another said to "find your happy place." I was ready to practice serenity and calm breathing and had several happy places in mind.

I didn't know if I'd need an injection beforehand, and so I was grimly bracing for that (fortunately, the Vitamin E was all I needed). I'm a chicken when it comes to needles.