BEFORE THE MRI
I woke up at four o’clock this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep for an hour and a half because I kept thinking about the MRI I have tomorrow.
Which is annoying.
Because intellectually, I know it’s not a big deal.
I’ve had MRIs before. I know how they work, that there’s a technician right there, and they can pull me out at any time.
My brain knows this.
But my body did not get the memo.
For years I’ve just called myself claustrophobic. The more I think about it, though, I don’t think that’s quite right.
When I was a kid, my mom used to have these crazy episodes. Screaming. Yelling. Throwing things.
Sometimes I would hide in my closet.
And the closet didn’t scare me. It made me feel safe.
I remember all the clothing around me. Soft. Fluffy. I could disappear in there and wait for whatever was happening outside to calm down. Sometimes I’d try to get outside instead and find somewhere to hide in the backyard.
But the closet worked.
Small.
Enclosed.
Safe.
So whatever this thing is, it isn’t simply being afraid of small spaces.
I didn’t really discover it until I was in my twenties.
I was up in Tobermory with some friends. We were camping, hanging out, checking out the area, and there were these caves.
Everybody was going inside.
Cool. Let’s check out a cave.
This wasn’t some tiny little hole in the ground. I wasn’t spelunking, squeezing through some crack sideways.
I could walk straight in, standing upright.
And almost immediately I started feeling wrong.
My breathing got shallow. My chest tightened. I could feel that prickly sweat starting.
Then this overwhelming thought:
This cave is going to collapse on top of me.
I turned around and walked outside.
Everything settled down.
So naturally I thought, What the hell was that?
And I went back in.
Same thing.
Chest tight.
Sweating.
Cave collapsing.
Get out.
Outside again.
Fine.
Back inside.
Not fine.
Apparently I spent part of my vacation conducting a very basic scientific experiment on myself.
Cave bad.
I remember thinking about it later on that same trip.
How the hell would I have survived as a caveman 200,000 years ago?
Everybody else is warm and cozy inside the cave.
I’m sleeping outside because I don’t trust the ceiling?
Saber-toothed tiger eats me before breakfast.
Natural selection.
Fair enough.
Even smaller spaces don’t necessarily bother me.
I can be underneath a deck that’s not far off the ground. I might not enjoy it because it’s damp, dirty and kind of gross, but that’s different.
It doesn’t give me that chest-tightening, crushing feeling that I’m completely trapped with nowhere to go.
That seems to be the difference.
Then Multiple Sclerosis happened.
And I had my first MRI.
Brain and spine.
The full tour.
Suddenly that weird thing I discovered in Tobermory became extremely relevant.
They slid me into the machine with the cage around my head, and my body went straight back to the cave.
Sweating.
Chest tight.
Heart pounding.
I gotta get out.
Get me out now.
GET ME OUT.
I started yelling at the technician to pull me out.
They did. I calmed down, then eventually went back in.
I told the technician, You have to talk to me. I need to hear your voice all the way through.
That became one of the ways I got through it.
Over the years I figured out another trick: getting them to prop my head up just enough so I could see out.
Sometimes literally just a sliver.
But that little sliver means everything.
Because I don’t think the fear is really about being in a small space.
I think it’s about not having an exit.
The closet didn’t scare me because I could open the door. Being underneath a deck doesn’t scare me because I know where outside is.
The cave scared me because my brain decided the whole thing could collapse and bury me alive.
The MRI gives me the same feeling.
I’m slid into a tube with a cage around my head. I can’t move properly. I can’t really see what’s happening around me.
Somebody else controls when I come out.
And my brain starts finding ways for that to go wrong.
My favourite completely rational thought is: What if something crazy happens and all the technicians die?
Or there’s some emergency and everybody has to evacuate.
Fire. Earthquake. Whatever.
Everybody runs away, and I’m still lying there inside this machine with a cage around my head.
Trapped.
Apparently that’s the thought my brain decides is worth thinking about at four o’clock in the morning.
I haven’t had an MRI in about three years, partly because I hate them.
At one point I basically told my neurologist, I’m not doing the whole spine thing anymore. Get whatever pictures you actually need. Get me in. Get me out.
There’s no cure anyway.
Unless something dramatically changes with my symptoms, I’m not spending half my life being shoved into that thing.
He understood.
Then he retired.
New neurologist.
New baseline.
Guess what.
MRI tomorrow morning.
And I understand all of it.
I understand what my neurologist wants and what they’re looking for. I understand I’m safe, that there’s a technician sitting right there, and that no one is going to abandon me inside an MRI machine during some catastrophic event.
Apparently none of that matters to my body.
That’s the weird part about fear.
Sometimes understanding it doesn’t make it go away.
I don’t think I’m really afraid of small spaces.
I’m afraid of being trapped.
Of losing the exit.
Which is probably why that tiny sliver outside the machine means so much to me.
I don’t need to see the whole room.
I don’t need more space.
I just need proof that there is still a way out.
Tomorrow morning I’ll go in. They’ll put the cage around my head. I’ll ask them to prop me up a little and keep talking to me.
I’ll find my little sliver of outside.
And I’ll probably still be scared.
So.
Let’s see what actually happens.
⸻
AFTER THE MRI
Apparently my body wanted to make sure I had good material for the post-MRI essay.
Easy scan? Calm breathing? Everything goes great?
Nah.
That’s boring, buddy.
You need some drama.
The technicians were great.
They put a soft pad underneath my head, and I thought, Okay. Maybe that’s enough.
Then they started putting me into the machine.
Hold on.
I need my head higher.
This time, unlike three years ago, the whole cage around my head could actually tilt.
They tilted it up.
Perfect.
Earplugs in. Headphones on. Alarm in my hand in case I need out.
Into the machine.
Okay.
I’m all right.
I’m all right.
I’m all right.
About twenty seconds later:
Uh-oh.
The noise started. My head was locked in. I couldn’t move.
And my body went:
Nope.
I started counting.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Not really seconds. Just breaths, numbers, anything to give my brain something else to do.
Somewhere around forty, it fell apart.
Wait.
What?
You can’t even count.
Then the heart started.
Not just fast.
Hard.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Huge beats I could feel inside my chest.
Then the prickly sweat started across my bald head.
I needed something else.
So I raised my hands and started feeling around the lip of the opening.
It had this weird gritty texture, almost like the painted concrete around a swimming pool where they mix grit into it so you don’t slip.
I kept touching it.
Feeling the texture with my fingers.
Anything for my brain to concentrate on other than the cage around my head.
All the while, I’m trying not to move because if I screw up the pictures, I get to do this all over again.
Then the panic hit hard again.
The alarm was right there in my hand.
I wanted to squeeze it.
Really wanted to squeeze it.
But another thought was sitting right beside the panic:
If I stop this now, I have to start again.
Fuck that.
So I stayed.
Eventually they got through the first long section.
Then the technician came on through the headphones.
We’re coming to the end.
Next series is about six minutes.
Six minutes.
That number helped more than I expected.
Suddenly this thing wasn’t endless anymore.
There was an end.
From there, it only got shorter.
It’s almost over.
You’re getting through it.
You’re on the tail end.
It’s not getting longer.
It’s getting shorter.
The panic tried to come back, but now I had something to answer it with.
Shorter.
Shorter.
Shorter.
I stopped touching the sides, closed my eyes, crossed my arms over my chest and moved the alarm away from my hand.
Then I counted again.
Still badly.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Whatever.
Just keep going.
And then it was over.
They pulled me out.
Relief.
A little embarrassment.
And yeah, some pride too.
I made it.
I thanked the technicians. Seriously. They were great.
Then I tried to get off the table.
My body was jelly.
My legs barely wanted to work, and I almost fell getting off the thing.
So I took my time. Got dressed. Got myself together. Made my way home.
Now I’m sitting in my chair feeling completely wrung out.
Nothing bad happened.
The technicians were great. The scan was short. The head tilt worked.
I knew I was safe.
And I still had a panic attack.
Maybe that’s the part I understand better now.
The goal wasn’t to convince my body there was nothing to be afraid of.
Apparently that argument had already been lost.
The goal became smaller.
Find something I can touch.
Find something I can count.
Listen for the technician’s voice.
Wait for a number.
Six minutes.
Five.
Four.
Shorter.
Shorter.
Shorter.
I didn’t stop being afraid.
I just stayed long enough for it to end.
And apparently I get to do this again next year.
So.
Rinse and repeat, I guess.
Thanks, Doc.
⸻
Read Part 2: Fear of the Final Fall