MRIs are considered the best option for scanning patients with neurological symptoms, but what happens if you can't fit into one of the machines?

That's what's happening to a man from Gander who was hit by a ball that struck a rock while playing softball recently, and has lost the use of his legs.

Tom Whalen may not look too big for modern medicine to handle, but he is.

“I was supposed to get an MRI done last week at our local hospital here in Gander, but unfortunately all our machines are one size and I don't fit into them,” Whalen told CBC News.

Edward Kendall, a medical technologist at Memorial University, says a small minority of patients don't fit in conventional MRIs. (CBC)

The width of conventional MRI machines like the five in Newfoundland and Labrador is 60 to 70 centimetres. The weight limitation is 350 to 400 pounds.

It fits most people, but not all.

“Patients who won't fit in an MRI, in a conventional MRI, are in the small minority, in the few per cent, perhaps up to five per cent,” said Edward Kendall, a medical technologist at Memorial University.

“And it's not a matter of just body mass, it's a matter of geometry as well."

That includes physical characteristics like very broad shoulders.

Kendall says “out-of-the-ordinary” equipment has been available for years, but the choice comes down to where the province wants to invest its health-care dollars. Health officials want "the maximum spectrum of use” when they invest in expensive diagnostic equipment.

The closest wide-bore MRI machine appears to be at a private clinic in Montreal. A spokesperson there said the clinic receives many referrals from Ontario and New Brunswick, especially from claustrophobic patients. There don't appear to have been any from Newfoundland and Labrador.

Meanwhile, Whalen says he doesn’t have the cash to pay his own way for MRI scanning on the mainland.

Health officials say that is a matter between him and MCP.