a giant cylinder of entrapment

I’ve had several friends ask me, “How did your MRI go?” Well, I didn’t completely freak out and break the machine or anything. Have you ever had an MRI? My dad has MS and I can remember him describing the experience when I was younger. He explained that there’s lots of banging and knocking and whirring and more knocking and banging and whirring. That image always stuck with me. On Thursday I had the third MRI I’ve had in my life. And that description that my dad gave years ago is dead on. But the loud racket isn’t the hard part. It’s the having to lie really still while being inserted into a giant tube. Imagine slipping a Barbie doll inside of a paper towel roll.

I did make the technician aware of my navel piercing and that I wasn’t able to get the jewelry out. I think I finally assured him that I would, indeed, take my life into my own hands and that I had had X-rays and an MRI with it in before. He said if I felt it tugging for pulling or irritating me in anyway to let him know and he would stop the test. I thought to myself, “Dude, that thing is lying harmoniously in a soft, plump bed of belly and I can barely see it without a mirror. I doubt it will go anywhere.”

I wouldn’t really consider myself to be the kind who easily freaks out. But the first few minutes of an MRI are the worst. I found myself having crazy ideas about their being a massive earthquake and me being stuck in that giant tube in two hospital gowns and a pillow beneath my knees. I mean Nashville is kind of on the cusp of the New Madrid fault line and we’re still waiting for “The Big One” that is suppose to suck part of Kentucky into the ground. In my mind the MRI machine also caught on fire and the technician made a run for it and left me there to go up in flames. Are hospital gowns flame retardant? Wait, is my navel ring twitching? After a few minutes my mind settled down and I went to a happy place. I thought of the huskies and the way Keyara nudges my hand with her snout to say, “Hey, why did you stop petting me”? I picked out bridesmaid dresses for when the day comes (Hey, we all do it and you know I’m right. Besides, I want my Girls to look pretty.). I also designed the layout for a backyard bathhouse and Yurt like I had read about in Domino Magazine in the waiting room at Dr. Schoettle’s office that morning. Before I knew it the test was over and the technician was pulling me out of the tube and I was back in the dressing room trying to get the knots in my two hospital gowns untied.

Now we wait. The MRI's and X-rays will be reviewed. They will be compared to my MRI from 2004. Then Dr. Schoettle's office will contact me for another appointment.