First published in the Tri-Town Transcript May 19, 2016
By Esther C. Baird
Ok, here’s the deal, especially to fellow parents of youth who graciously and lovingly request your round-the-clock chauffeuring services: May is the new December.
December used to be the craziest month with school concerts, recitals, holiday parties and the ridiculously overwrought Christmas card process, all without even mentioning the shopping and general Fa La La-ing. My heart races even to type that, except . . . May.
I mentioned to a friend that I thought May was becoming like December and she snapped, “It’s worse!”
Ok, sorry I mentioned it. Except I’m snapping too. Here, near the end of the school year, I’m wrung out like a dish towel that was used to wipe down the inside of a garbage can that held chicken leftovers way too long and Lysol is no longer cutting it. I’m sure the dish towel was originally part of a happy matching set, but now . . . I actually don’t know. I’ve lost my train of thought with the dish towel analogy. It’s May, and I can’t think.
So I was excited to see that I had scheduled some relaxation time complete with a warm blanket, no cell phone and no computer. You’re probably asking, how is such a magical thing possible in May?
Allow me to present: the MRI appointment.
Regular Readers will recall my back injury from a few columns ago. Well, it’s sticking around in the most annoying way and an MRI was the next thing to do.
I’ve had MRIs before and frankly I’d enjoyed them. I went into the tube, though always feet first, with a blanket, an eye mask and headphones, what’s not to love?? Sure they’re loud, but, hello!, so are elementary school recitals. Nobody asks you for a snack inside an MRI.
This time however, I had to go in head first. And what was this? No eye mask or headphones?
Still, I’d be alone, and I’d just close my eyes in the tube.
Which I did. Until, just for pure scientific observation, I opened them.
Regular Reader, if you’re claustrophobic you should stop reading now. Go get yourself a stiff drink on behalf of my poor past self that so naively did not have a shred of common sense.
When I opened my eyes in the tube, as the magnetic sounds shook me to the core, I knew the simple truth: I’d been injected into a coffin and shot to the center of the earth. All the weight of the planet was crushing me slowly, and loudly, to death. It was like what you may have imagined, as a child, being digested for all of time by the Sarlacc in Return of the Jedi, would feel like.
Or even as adult you might have that fear. Turns out I did.
I tried breathing exercises and recited lyrics from hymns, I imagined my girlfriend who toured with STOMP dancing to the beat of the MRI, I thought of wide open fields and vast sunlit lakes and squeezed my hands to make sure I was still alive. That, in turn, made me feel my wedding ring.
I had forgotten to take it off!!! I’d broken the cardinal ‘no metal’ rule of the MRIl!
My ring finger was going to be ripped off and flung against the wall. I’d be splattered with finger bits and my ring would be pulverized. There were no breathing exercises for such knowledge.
“How are you holding up?” The voice of the MRI tech cut through my visions of dismemberment.
“Oh, you know,” I tried to sound sane, “I’m fine, it’s just, I forgot to take off my wedding ring.”
“I bet your husband will be happy to hear that!” The tech laughed and the MRI began whirling again.
Such a super funny joke . . . to someone not being slowly suffocated by an alien life form. But I assumed it meant I’d keep my finger.
And then I felt myself sliding out. The Sarlacc was releasing me? The drums would stop banging inside my actual skull? My hands and fingers were attached to my body? I came out totally disoriented. I’d lost track of what day, or even what month, it was.
Oh right, it’s May. Can I get back in the tube?