Tunnel Visions

     "The door should have been a dead giveaway. At least six feet wide, solid looking, with a foot-long lever instead of a knob, it could only have been built to keep intruders out - or something deadly within. Muffled throbs, clanks and mechanical whirs slipped through the interstices while the thump whoosh thump whoosh of a mechanistic heartbeat made the very air reverberate."




And that's as far as I got in writing a horror story the other evening. I had it all mapped out, but then a funny thing happened. Literally. Everything just became too funny. I was generating the story while sitting in my cubby waiting for the MRI. They had given me one of those gowns, neglecting the small fact that I have a shoulder injury and couldn't reach behind my back to tie the damned thing. I was supposed to come out when I was done. So I waited. No one came to get me, and I wondered how long I'd be there until someone checked. Maybe they'd forget me and I'd be locked in the building all night. Would that be bad? There was a TV and coffee machine in the waiting room. Probably an employee lounge with snacks too, if I could find it. Eventually, I clutched the gown with one hand and poked my head out of the cubby. The orderly, of course, had to be a guy.

"Ummm, could you tie this for me?" I asked, blushing. Why is it that I can walk on the beach in a bikini with impunity, but asking a guy to tie a garment with all of the sex appeal of a shroud makes me cringe with embarrassment? Beside, I still had my jeans on. Sans belt, of course; no belt buckles allowed. I asked about the metal snaps and zipper.

"Nah, it's OK. You might feel a little pull, but I doubt it."

I had visions of my nether regions being unceremoniously lifted and fastened to the interior of the tunnel.

I answered the usual questions about pacemakers, piercings, body art, metal plates and screws. Had I ever worked as a machinist or been subjected to metal dust, grindings, or gotten any metal particles in my eyes.

Presumably, said metal shavings might be sucked out of my body or eyeballs by the magnet. I frantically tried to remember if I'd ever swallowed any coins as a child and whether or not they might still be in my intestinal tract somewhere. I wondered if Mom would remember. Should I call? Or take my chances?

He asked me twice while strapping me in if I felt scared or nauseous. I didn't. But now I started to wonder if people did that sort of thing. Did they freak out? Have complete meltdowns? Throw up? Wet themselves? I hope they sterilize these things between patients. Is there good air flow? What if the person ahead of me farted? What if I have to go to the bathroom halfway through?

(Do you see how it became impossible to maintain the proper mind set for a horror story?)

They offered me music. I looked over the selection; 60s, 70s pop, Sinatra, Elvis, country, jazz, Top 40, UK pop (I didn't know that was a "type") Best of the 90s (surely that was an endless repetition of the same 5 songs) and rap hip/hop. I elected to forgo music entirely, as the thought of being trapped motionless in a metal tube and being subjected to a bad song was worse than the fear of noise a mere imaging machine could produce.

The MRI generates a magnetic field 60,000x as intense as the earth's, causing the hydrogen atoms in the body to vibrate and emit radio waves which are then used to produce images of your tissues and organs. One would think that with all of that going on, one would certainly feel something. One would be wrong. It was actually a very comfortable experience for me. The table and pillow were comfy, there was a nice cushion under my knees, I was swaddled with towels and sandbags, and although the tunnel probably seems a little confining to some (it looked to be about 9 inches from my face) I found it very cozy. Even the cooling pump had a soothing rhythym to it.

And so, instead of thinking and reflecting, I...err...dozed off. Had it not been for the attendant checking me every 5 minutes, I would have had a lovely nap.

So, I got nothing written. But I might just tuck that opening away for a rainy day.

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Thanks for all of your warm wishes, thoughts, prayers, and comments. I'll get a report from the orthopedic surgeon next week and we'll see what's what. Happy July 4th holiday to my US friends. :)

(I've typed very few comments but have been around to a total of 67 blogs today, so don't think for a minute that I don't know what you've been up to.)