Just Me and My Thoughts

Last Tuesday I had an MRI done to see what is going on with my back. I'm still waiting for the doctor to call me with the results, so I still don't know what going on, but hopefully will soon enough.

When the imaging center called to schedule my appointment, the woman on the phone asked me if I was claustrophobic. Now I wouldn't define myself as classically claustrophobic, but I do not like the idea of being crammed into tight spaces, especially with something very close to my face. I'm really not even very comfortable in the very back of a minivan, but with the window cracked, I do alright. So the woman offered to set me up with the open MRI, which helped put me a bit at ease about the whole thing. Unfortunately, once I was standing there in my scrubs, bra-less and all, I noticed that the contraption I was about to be loaded into was very much indeed sided. Just a great big metal box with a narrow, very narrow, tubal opening. And it was cold, very cold. But did I say anything? Of course I didn't. I never do. Well, I shouldn't say "never". I have a knack for speaking up when I should keep my mouth shut, but not standing up for myself when I should. What can I say? It's a curse. Then just when I'm being inserted into the narrow, narrow tube, the tech guy says, "If you need to get out, just start yelling and kicking your legs. Oh, and this should take about 20 to 25 minutes". Huh? What happened to the 12 to 15 minutes the woman over the phone told me? Was anything she said to me the truth?

I tried keeping my eyes shut, reciting Hail Marys in my head to pass the time. Freezing, with a thin sheet pulled over me, with poorly placed ear plugs in my ears to help keep out the banging, whooping, grinding noises that contraption made. Finally unable to keep my eyes shut any longer, I had to peek. Just how close was my face to the top? Uh, pretty close. But not so close that I'd loose my cool. But I had to keep peeking, just to make sure it wasn't closing in on me or anything. And the time passed, but I had no idea how much time had passed. Then my brain started wondering what would happen if they just forgot me in there. Would I be able to squiggle out? Would I get stuck? What do they do with large people, because honestly I don't think a lot of Americans would fit in there. I wondered if anyone ever sneezed in there. And how did they clean in there? Then my left hand fell asleep. Oh great. But I was told to keep as still as possible, so I didn't want to move my hand to try to get the feeling back, so I just lied there wondering how much longer could this take. What was going to happen if I didn't get to move my hand soon? Would I be able to not move my hand until this was over, because the desire to move it was starting to overcome my will to stay still. And who ever first came up with the idea of using a magnetic field to take internal images? I was going to have to look that up when I get home. And blah, blah, and some more blah blah blah.

Then it occurred to me, that I would not be a good candidate for one of those sensory deprivation tanks that are supposed to help you relax. All the crap my brain kept coming up with was not relaxing, it was stressing me out.

Oh, and Vince killed another scorpion yesterday. This one was in the garage though, no more in the house since the first. But I have warned the children to shake out their shoes before putting them on though, just in case.