So…Donald Trump got an MRI, but he’s really stupid about it.

Trump added Sunday that he has no idea on what part of his body he got the MRI.

It was just an MRI, he said. What part of the body? It wasn’t the brain because I took a cognitive test and I aced it.

Doctors typically order an MRI to help with diagnosing symptoms or to monitor an ongoing health problem. So-called “preventive” cardiac and abdominal MRIs are not part of routine screening recommendations. What Trump’s doctor called an “executive physical” generally refers to adding extra, non-routine tests including MRIs to pricey and lengthy exams, not covered by insurance, that are marketed to wealthy people.

I can speak authoritatively from a patient’s perspective on MRIs, because I’ve had two of them in the past year. The first was for a knee problem, and the second was that the doctors wanted to rule out that I was having a stroke after a blood vessel in my eye popped.

First thing I can say is that MRIs are expensive and you don’t get them routinely. The doctors have to get approval from the insurance company, which is maybe not an issue for a stupidly rich person. But they don’t just give them to you on a whim — they have a medical reason for checking you out, and they tell you why they’re doing it. Even if you are so rich you can afford to just do it, it’s going to take a substantial chunk of time, maybe an hour or more, so doctors do try to justify it to you.

The second thing is that you know what’s being scanned. For my knee, they braced it with a couple of padded clamps to hold it in place. For my brain scan, they fitted a plastic helmet around my head to limit movement. Only an idiot would fail to recognize what the instrument was for.

Thirdly, afterwards the doctors tell you what they found. In one case, they found I had a torn meniscus; in the other, no evidence that I’d had a stroke (that must be what getting a “perfect” MRI means). They both discussed it with me in person and sent me an after-examination document that spelled it all out. They also noted some deterioration of the cervical vertebrae, but my knees, other than the meniscus, were flawless.

Is Trump so out of it that the doctors treated him as a dumb piece of meat, sending him off for tests without explanation, stuffing him into a noisy tube without explanation and no preparation, and then not bothering to let him know the results? Did he just sleep through the whole procedure?

Fourthly, you don’t “ace” a cognitive test, and it’s mostly separate from MRIs. I had an MRI but I’ve never taken a cognitive test — the doctors have no suspicion that I’m cognitively impaired, so they don’t bother testing. My mother, on the other hand, didn’t get an MRI because she wasn’t exhibiting those kinds of physical symptoms, but she was exhibiting behavioral symptoms, so they gave her a basic cognitive test, like the ones Trump has previously described (she did fail parts of the test, which was heartbreaking to see). Passing a cognitive test only means that you’ve retained basic mental skills, like having short-term memory and being able to draw a clock face.

You get a cognitive test when there are grounds to suspect a patient is having mental problems. I’ve never had one, but Trump has had a couple of them, with good reason, I think.

You get MRIs when there are physical symptoms that warrant a closer look. Trump seems to be getting trundled off to all kinds of exceptional tests, suggesting that doctors are concerned.

Of course, it’s also possible that he has hired a team of unethical, incompetent doctors, similar to his usual hiring practices, and they see Trump as a healthy mark with more money than sense that they can gouge for all kinds of unnecessary testing.