MRI

Wednesday evening I went in to Georgetown hospital for an MRI, which the liver doc needs to get a good look at my plumbing in advance of a procedure next week to clear out my bile ducts (and no doubt improve the editorial disposition of this very blog). When I made the MRI appointment, I didn't give it much thought -- I've had dozens of CT and PET scans, which are a little tedious but not uncomfortable. And I frequently read about ball players with injuries getting MRIs, particularly guys who play hard and bang into stuff like Bryce Harper, although he does not get the scan every time he gets plunked. In any event I wasn't worried -- what's one more test?

A nurse showed me to the dressing room and the hospital gowns -- oh for my leopard-print State Department robe -- and then stuck an IV into my left arm. He brought me to the MRI room, a vault with a big freaky machine built around a tube that looked just barely large enough to fit an adult of respectable size. I lay on my back on a conveyor in front of the tube. An MRI tech strapped a contraption to my chest designed to guide the scanner, put an emergency call button in my right hand, and put headphones on my ears so I could hear his instructions about when to hold my breath. Also, in theory, I could listen to the radio. (They could not get the Nats game; I settled for NPR.)

None of this was yet awful, even when the tech retreated to safety behind a thick window, closed the vault and fired up the big freaky machine. The conveyor slid me into that tube, which was I suppose big enough to accommodate an adult who was not suddenly seized with thoughts of premature burial. But then the guidance contraption on my chest started to weigh heavy, the headphones squeezed my ears, the machine banged and whirred, and the tech told me to hold my breath, which was not really what I was inclined to do at that point, particularly considering my limited lung capacity. I was more inclined to claw my way out of the tube, tear off all the hospital stuff and dash from the vault in my fetching gown, dripping IV trailing behind me. Freedom has its price.

I decided against that, barely. I closed my eyes and held my breath and started to sweat, counting the rhythmic metallic bangs of the machine, abandoning all interest in the narrative of This American Life playing through my headphones, and remembering urgently that oxygen is actually quite important to one's ability to get up and go home after such torture. I gasped just as the tech said pleasantly that it is now OK to breathe.

OK, it wasn't more than 20 seconds, but we were just getting started. For the next 40 minutes, the machine raged, I held my breath on command, I squirmed and sweated, and when I tried to talk through the intercom to the tech -- a new person after 20 minutes, apparently I had lasted through a shift change -- I got no answer. I fingered the emergency button but did not use it because, I decided, being miserable is not an emergency. And anyway, I imagined the button launching me from the tube like a torpedo.

At last the machine spun down and the tech said I was done. She pointed me back to the dressing room, where I recovered most of my dignity and left behind at least a little anxiety. And when I got home, I played it all up, noting that the trauma of the experience had somehow hindered my ability to do the dishes. Sally and the girls lovingly obliged while I sat on the couch, watched the end of the game and murmured woefully every time they came within hearing about that tube and that thing on my chest.

Yes, I know I should not whine. In fact I am lucky to be in the care of top-notch health care professionals with access to such extraordinary technology, freaky as it is. I shall blame my bad MRI attitude on that backup of bile and look forward to arising next Wednesday with a rosy disposition after they clean out the pipes.