The MRI

It’s been a year, but you’re used to this. You’ve been getting these things so regularly for the last twelve years, sometimes monthly.

It’s been a year; it should be easy. You know how this works.

It’s been a year; it’s not easy.

Never mind the getting there on the Tuesday after a bank holiday weekend. Never mind the rain warnings and the traffic.

It’s the afternoon later and I’ve taken the time to breathe. To comfort eat far too much of the leftover Celebrations, so much that you’re eating and you hate yourself for it because you know this isn’t good for you. So you sit down and you breathe (still eating the Celebration though.) And as you breathe, you realise how deep it goes.

It begins with the claustrophobia. You walk into the hospital…no, you don’t walk in to the hospital, you walk up to the door and you see the no-smoking signs, and you hear the vocals telling people not to smoke, but they’re still standing there smoking and you can’t get past them to get to the door without breathing in their cigarette smoke and they’re just standing and you want to shout at them that you’re at a fucking hospital for fuck’s sake, just fucking stop. Just…stop.

But you don’t.

And you walk into the hospital and it’s an open space of light, but over there to the side is the Irish Cancer Society signs and stuff, and you try not to look or acknowledge cos you just have to get this over with.

So you keep walking.

This corridor seems to get smaller as you walk, tighter, shrinking, Willy Wonka-ing; you walk past the place wherein you remember the speech and language therapy stuff, and then there’s the glasses to either side showing you green spaces. And then it gets tighter. And tighter.

The ATM/bank/whatever the fuck it is to the left. The shop to the right. The canteen to the left that was a franchised Starbucks a while ago, but you weren’t in the mood for a Starbucks. There are no more windows here. There’s a bathroom to the right and even with the doors closed, you can smell the bleach; they’re not dirty, but they’re so clean they feel like they’ve been dirty.

You know the way, so you keep walking. But you don’t know the way, cos it’s a fucking dungeon, a claustrophobic dungeon of doom and decay, none of which it is, but it feels like that. And can’t write that and not love the way you’ve written this.

So you turn a little bit to another corridor, the space where there’s one group of lifts, knowing there’s just another group of lifts mere metres away, all looking the same, acting the same, working their way downstairs to the pits. And just as you turn, you cross paths with your oncologist, deep in conversation with someone else: you nod, but you don’t think he recognises, but what does it matter cos you’ll see him next week anyway.

The lifts? No. No fucking way. They’re confusing and you can never tell which way you’re turning when you get out of them, so you take the stairs because they’re less confusing and maybe, just maybe, you won’t have to be close to someone else.

And even though you know the way, you’re still in this never-ending labyrinth, so you question your choices of which corridor you’re walking. Have you chosen correctly? Are you going to get lost in this never-ending pit of despair, just like you were trapped that summer 12 years before?

You know where the surgical labs are, off to the left, the two different sets of lifts; you know that one of those sets of lifts are meant to be prioritised for surgical patients.

You know where the chapel is, and you hate yourself for that time you went in there, that morning that you couldn’t sleep before the first surgery, where you went in for just a moment of…something, and the sunrise was happening ,casting such lighting in this space that you know there’s no Higher Power out there to look after you, but you’re still fucking terrified that maybe you’re wrong.

But you’re not going to the chapel.

There’s windows here again, a small flash of hope and life; small, and they don’t belong, but they’re there. You know what’s ahead of you, and they’re a chance to breathe before you step in to the waiting room.

You give them your name, your date of birth, they tell you where to walk as if you don’t know the way. You walk past the people there for their X-Rays, their CT scans, their ultrasounds and you’re fucking jealous cos they’re having it so much easier than you. Cos you have to go deeper, trying to go straight but the corridor isn’t straight and there’s beds, patients awaiting their own scans, some of them tired, some of them so high on their relevant meds that all you can do is hope they’re okay.

Ah, the MRI waiting room. It’s hard not to sit there and have the memories; the fucking terror of sitting there every fucking time, wondering if this is the fucking time when it’s going to be bad. Wondering if somebody somewhere is going to ask you something, to make small talk.

Fucking small talk. No. No. Just…no.

But…today, maybe some part of me needs it. I’m on my own, and I want to be on my own, I don’t need someone else there, but I’m lonely in that same space. I’m thinking of the times I’ve sat there, making small talk with patients just the day after their surgery, wondering if today’s scan has changed anything. And you try not to get involved, but you just nod politely, and you share that space, that fear, that hope, that terror.

The fucking terror. Fuck, I remember that so much. Sitting there, I can never forget that terror. I know it too well, and I can’t engage in someone else’s…because I can’t go back to my own. I can’t let that flare up and take me over.

Except for that one time that my mother was with me, and you can’t shut her up, so as we’re walking away, she starts trying to give someone those couple of seconds of hope, and some part of me hates her for it, and another part of me loves her so much for being able to do it, cos I now know some of those people so much and I love them so much because there’s this unspoken understanding that we GET that moment and that place, and you can’t fucking explain it.

You’re given the questionnaire and they’re changed the font and they’ve changed the layout and it looks slightly different so you have to actually fucking read it this time and pay attention and you don’t want to pay attention, you just want it over and done with already. Over. And. Done.

And there’s the people sitting next to you, and they’re at the beginning of their journey, and the mom is putting on a face and she’s listening to the daughter (at least I’m assuming such a relationship) and they’re being honest and I shouldn’t be there, I shouldn’t here this honesty from both of them, but they’re fucking scared, the two of them…but they’re putting on brave faces for each other. But there’s the one or two things that the other is saying and it’s too close to home for the listener, and the conversation just. Halts.

And it happens two or three times between them and you’re SO FUCKING HAPPY when they come and take you in.

Except it’s just to put the line in for the dye for your scan, and the release is for mere seconds, cos you’re going back outside to the waiting room. except the conversation has kind of died cos one of them is on the phone and I’ve no idea how they’re getting a signal down her cos there’s never a good enough signal.

So I start searching for a signal, I start trying to connect to the patient’s wi-fi, but to do so I need to enter my phone number and they’ll send me a text with the password but you’re deep in the pits of hell and you don’t receive text messages down here.

So you do a sudoku, and then another, and then you’re just about to finish another one and you’re nearly happy with how it’s going when you’re then summoned in for the scan.

The fucking scan.

The FUCKING scan.

Is it the machine to the left, the one you spent over an hour in once, that surgery going into deep detail so they knew exactly which bits to cut whilst you were awake? Or is it the other machine, the newer machine that seems to be your regular one, a newer machine than the first time you were in that room and the machine was so old and small you couldn’t get your shoulders in.

As if you don’t hate your body enough as it is, but you now have to fit into this even further, closer space, but there’s no way in hell that it can get closer and tighter, can it?

I know the answer to those questions, but those answers never change.

You lie down and they start to tell you how the machine works, and you nod and you smile and you listen, but nothing goes in, cos you’re here for the scan and you just want it to be over. You fucking NEED it to be over.

And you lie down, and they give you small ear plugs and they get you to but your head into the small fucking square that sits at the end of the bed, the square that your head doesn’t fucking fit into, even before the tiniest little cardboard headphones were in.

And then they get you to lift your head up and put the real headphones on you so they can play you a lovely bit of a national radio station, or their little notifications as to how long the next segment of the scan is Except you’re in a fucking MRI machine, with ear plugs in your ears and you’re not listening cos you just need it over and done with already.

And then the strap when they lock your fucking head in place to make sure you don’t move. The clicks just next to your ears, so close you can hear them. You’ve to move your head ever so slightly, whatever way you can, to make sure they can click at your chin, your shoulders. To make sure that you can’t fucking get out.

Here’s the small alarm that you can press if you need help, but we’re now going to wheel you into this fucking claustrophobic tube of DOOM and what does it matter if you need help or assistance when you’re in here, huh? Somebody else has to come into this locked room with its heavy door to get out out, and even then, you’re still strapped to this bed; you still have this cable of headphones, and a line in your arm. There is no fucking escape. Just breathe and deal. And breathe.

You know, somewhere, deep down, someone has puked in this machine.

You know someone has shat themselves, or pissed themselves.

You know that there’s someone out there in the world thinking they know how this machine works, and they’ve never been on the receiving end of it.

You wonder if the people in the other room, controlling this machine, locking you up inside, you wonder if they’ve had to sit through this as part of their training, their education.

You’ve gotten this so many times that you know when it’s coming to a close, sixteen beeps every ten seconds (or so) for about five minutes. You know it’s sixteen, because some part of your brain has always counted them: one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight; one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight. And you know that, in the other machine, one the first seven, another noise kicks in, an echo of sorts.

But not in this machine. This is the newer machine that’s nicer to you, but no less claustrophobic.

But it’s okay, because these are the last chords, the crescendo with which you know salvation is at hand, wherein someone else is going to come into this room, to unlock all those restraints. You’ll still need to get the line removed from your arm, and dear FUCK the owies of that hair being pulled at in doing so, but you’ll be out.

You’ll be out and you’ll wonder why do I do this to myself, why do I agree to have these scans regularly to make sure it stays calm and doesn’t get bigger.

Why do I do it?

Because I’m fucking terrified that at some stage, IT will be back, and the only person I can blame for not noticing it is myself.

But at least the machine knows. The imagery will know.

It’s been a year, but you’re used to this. You’ve been getting these things so regularly for the last twelve years, sometimes monthly.

It’s been a year; it should be easy. You know how this works.

It’s been a year; it’s not easy.

For reference, the imagery used at the top of this post is taken from Final Destination Bloodlines with one such death in the movie being caused by an MRI machine; this death is solely partly indicative of some of the trauma from same.

You’re welcome