For the last few weeks, I’ve been having terrible neurological issues. Every night, just around midnight, I lose consciousness, sometimes for as many as seven or eight hours, and during these spells I have strange and vivid hallucinations, often featuring energetic encounters with attractive celebrities.
Finally, last week, convinced I was suffering from a wasting neurological disease, I ran to my doctor, who reassured me I was likely experiencing a very common and harmless condition technically known in the medical community as shut-eye. But just to be safe, he ordered an MRI of my brain. (“Just to be safe” is a medical euphemism that, depending on context, can mean either “I am fully committed to the cause of defensive medicine” or “I have profit sharing in a diagnostic imaging company.”)
And so I found myself on a sunny May afternoon at the insurance company-approved Afterglow Imaging Center (slogan: “Discount Healthcare for the Modestly Insured”), filling out paperwork that wanted to know if I had any metal in my body. The reason for the question is that an MRI machine uses magnets strong enough to rip a pacemaker out of your chest, and last the thing the hospital staff wants to do after a long day’s work is clean out the inside of the machine again.
I returned the paperwork to the woman at the front desk and followed her gesture, which directed me to the locker room where I was to change into a closed-in-the-front, open-in-the-back medical garment designed primarily for the amusement of hospital staff, and take a seat in the waiting room, which I did. Thankfully, the waiting room was empty.
After a few minutes, a technician entered.
“John Bluff?” she called, to no one in particular, as if unable to pick out the comically dressed patient from among the lamps and sofas.
“Guess that’s me,” I said, standing and addressing the room. “See you later, fellas.”
The technician introduced herself as Cheri and nodded for me to follow her into the hallway.
“Have you ever had an MRI before?” she asked.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Well, don’t be nervous. It’s perfectly safe,” she said, and led me through a door marked “¡Peligro!”
Beyond the door was a small room in which stood a very expensive-looking machine, one that by all appearances had been originally designed for loading Trident missiles onto nuclear submarines, but that had been re-purposed for medical use by adding a pillow and blanket.
At Cheri’s direction, I laid myself down on the loading platform. She fitted padded headphones over my ears.
“The noise can get quite loud,” she said.
A dad joke that had been passing through my mind got free of its shackles, made a dash to my lips, and leapt for freedom.
“What? I can’t hear you! Ha, ha!” I said.
Cheri did not laugh. Instead, she put a rubber bulb into my hand.
“This is a panic button. Give it a squeeze if you need anything during the procedure.”
“Or if I need to buzz in with the correct answer?”
This joke was a little better. Cheri’s lips looked as though they had been considering a smile, but decided against it.
“Any questions before we begin?”
I thought about this for a moment. I had several questions in fact, but I didn’t want to come across as an anxious idiot by asking a lot of silly questions she couldn’t answer. So I asked the one that seemed the least panicky.
“Cheri, what do you think happens when we die?”
“As I said before, this is only a diagnostic test. There is no danger at all,” she said, and then locked herself in an observation room which, judging by its fortifications, was last seen in the New Mexican desert in 1945.
Cheri started the launch sequence. The loading platform began to move, sliding me headfirst into the machine.
My life flashed before my eyes. I was not impressed.
A few moments later, an intercom above my head crackled to life. “How are you doing in there?”
“Fine, just fine. By the way, is there any radiation associated with--”
The intercom clicked off.
Within about a minute, the MRI machine began its important diagnostic work, which, as near as I could tell, consisted of determining how well my eardrums could withstand a curated playlist of piercing metal shrieks. Imagine music composed by a tone-deaf alien who evolved nails for the sole purpose of running them down a chalkboard. Fortunately, with the headphones over my ears, I could tolerate the noise, which was at least rhythmic.
Before I knew it, the concert was over, and Cheri appeared at my side.
“Not so bad, right?”
“Like living in a house with four kids, only quieter.”
This she laughed at.
A few days later, I received the results. Everything was fine. Now, I am sleeping peacefully, and when I do dream, it’s only of Robert Oppenheimer.
😆